I'm used to adapting my novels for feature film - it can be challenging to cut and compress three or four hundred pages into two hours of dramatic action.

Maybe that's what we look for in the people we love, the spark of unhappiness we think we know how to extinguish.

When things don't go well, it helps to think of yourself as a genius and the rest of the world as a bunch of idiots.

Every minute we were together, I felt like I was wandering in the dark through a strange house, groping for a light switch. And then, whenever I found one and turned it on, the bulb was dead.

Sooner or later we all lose our loved ones. We all have to suffer, every last one of us.

I read 'The Great Gatsby' in high school and was hypnotized by the beauty of the sentences and moved by the story about the irrevocability of lost love.

Once you'd broken through that invisible barrier that separates one person from another, you were connected forever, whether you liked it or not.

It just took some people a little longer than others to realize how few words they needed to get by, how much of life they could negotiate in silence.

Apparently even the most awful tragedies, and the people they'd ruined, got a little stale after a while.

I don't really distinguish between sympathy and honesty when I'm writing. The two go together - I'm interested in inhabiting my characters, seeing the world through their eyes.

He made me think of all the books I hadn't read, and all the ones I'd read but hadn't fully understood.

Sometimes it was worth all the disadvantages of marriage just to have that: one friend in an indifferent world.

If we have nothing material to give, we can offer our attention, our energy, our appreciation. The world needs us. It doesn’t deplete us to give.

Sharing is sometimes more demanding than giving.

The atonement of Christ is not just for those who sin. The mercy of Christ encompasses all pain.

I've found myself on some days leaving home at three in the morning. I'm outside the training ground at five but they don't open up until seven. I'm just sitting there, listening to the radio.

The art of producing good music from a cultivated voice can be achieved by many, but the art of producing that music from the harmony of a pure life is achieved very rarely.

The deadening part of Bible study is when you think you've already got it all figured out.

Procrustes was an editor.

It's actually against my religion to laugh at men who are toting guns.

You get attached to places, you know. Like people, I suppose.