I'm always aware of writing around things I can't do, and I've come to think that that's actually what 'style' is - an avoidance of your deficiencies.

I tend to foster drama via bleakness. If I want the reader to feel sympathy for a character, I cleave the character in half, on his birthday. And then it starts raining. And he's made of sugar.

What I regret most in my life are failures of kindness.

What I regret most in my life are failures of kindness. Those moments when another human being was there, in front of me, suffering, and I responded . . . sensibly. Reservedly. Mildly.

Do those things that incline you toward the big questions, and avoid the things that would reduce you and make you trivial.

Developing our sympathetic compassion is not only possible but the only reason for us to be here on earth.

According to me, your life is going to be a gradual process of becoming kinder and more loving. Hurry up. Speed it along. Start right now.

It's a big world, and I really like it.

Character is that sum total of moments we can't explain.

The generalizing writer is like the passionate drunk, stumbling into your house mumbling: I know I'm not being clear, exactly, but don't you kind of feel what I'm feeling?

Kindness, it turns out, is hard - it starts out all rainbows and puppy dogs, and expands to include . . . well, EVERYTHING.

The devil is the god of this planet and he does anything he wants to the people therein

Design is nothing if not decision making.

We're not home-and-hearth people. We're the adventurers, the buccaneers, the blockade runners. Without challenge, we're only alive.

Meditation is the calm in the chaos, the fastest way to settle down and get in touch with the stillness within.

There was a tacit understanding between them that 'liquor helped'; growing more miserable with every glass one hoped for the moment of relief.

The goal of effective communication should be for listeners to say, 'Me, too!' versus 'So what?'

My children range in age from 5 to 31. We adopted the 5-year-old, but people are often impressed with my wife before knowing that.

It is often said that men are ruled by their imaginations; but it would be truer to say they are governed by the weakness of their imaginations.

We need to start thinking collectively as a people about what we should be looking at.