I'm interested in reality but I'm not interested in realism at all. I'm interested in the ways that I think people want to relate.

Pepsi brings your ancestors back from the dead.

Boring people don't know they're boring. That's the problem with boring people.

I'm trying always to leave out what I think is extraneous. And to find what I think is the most wonderful language to make a beautiful sentence.

I think it's true that unless human beings experience something, they simply don't understand what people are going through.

I'm the author of my own misery.

I don't think anybody says to Coetzee or Dostoyevsky or Kafka, "Your characters aren't likeable." It's not about your character winning a popularity contest. That's not the writer's job.

It's not the writer who determines how good she is anyway. Writers don't determine that. It's readers who determine that.

Do the obvious, you won't forget it. Do the obvious, you won't regret it. Obvious, obvious, obvious.

Nonfiction gives you subjects. Writing fiction I can have more fun, but I have to invent my subject.

Without curiosity a writer is dead.

This was what we did as a species, after all: we built ingenious devices, and we destroyed things.

The greatest gift you have been given is the gift of your imagination - what do you dream of wanting to do?

The students in your youth ministry don’t need your clever ideas and great programming skills. They need a living model—a man or woman of God who is passionate about his or her faith.

Things really began to move for us. In 1953 I could afford to marry Doreen.

[Religious liberty was] in its nature an inalienable right ... because the opinions of men, depending only upon the evidence contemplated by their minds, cannot follow the dictates of other men.

Art is a kind of mining," he said. "The artist a variety of prospector searching for the sparkling silver of meaning in the earth.

Inspire the Vocal Brass, Inspire; The World is past its Infant Age: Arms and Honour, Arms and Honour, Set the Martial Mind on Fire, And kindle Manly Rage.

I have my best ideas when I am alone.

Don't raise your expectations too high. It's the surest way of being disappointed.

The play-maker is the most difficult position because you have to always know where everyone is on the pitch.