I'm always telling my students, don't - don't worry so much third person, first person. It doesn't make that much difference.

Language is the writer's only tool - we really don't have anything else - but our language contains within it our entire experience of the world.

We are surrounded by story.

A good writer sells out everybody he knows, sooner or later.

Guilt is glorious when it's well earned.

Heightism is the last unchecked prejudice.

The writing itself is the thing that generates stories for me.

When I'm not writing, I can't make sense of out anything. I feel the need to make some sense and find some order, and writing fiction is the only way I've found that seems to begin to do that.

I'd like to be better at short, snappy answers.

Without explaining why, and, most of all, without naming other authors or books, I can only say my novels are influenced by love and death.

We are at the mercy of time, and for all the ways we are remembered, a sea of things will be lost. But how much is contained in what lingers!

There is something really good to say about humility. Being confident and humble is a great combination, maybe the best of all!

Beneath the handsome exterior beats a heart of darkness.

The minute you begin to do what you really want to do, it's really a different kind of life.

Selfless, generous, compassionate living is unassailable.

I still need more healthy rest in order to work at my best. My health is the main capital I have and I want to administer it intelligently.

Every day is your day if you claim it. If you wait for somebody else to make it for you, you're going to be disappointed.

Poetry makes possible the deepest kind of personal possession of the world.

We think it's about little techniques and tricks, but techniques only take you so far. We need teachers who care about kids, who care about what they teach, and who can communicate with kids.

In my twenties, my pleasures tended to be physical. In my thirties, my pleasures tended to be intellectual. I can't say which was more exquisite.

To embrace luck, you have to enhance your tolerance for ambiguity.