I never listen to music when I write.

You would be amazed by what you can give up, lose, or break, and yet still be a person who gets happy over brownies.

...handsome people are always interesting to watch. But a handsome person in crisis is riveting.

You need to grab your dream out of the sky like it's a kite and pinch the string through your fingers until you reach the spool.

I myself am made entirely of flaws, stitched together with good intentions.

I can't tell you how much I love Target and Costco, that kind of culture, because it's something I never felt a part of. I've always felt like a tourist because I have never fit in anywhere.

Should I just sit down, right here at carousel seven, and shake until somebody's arms are around me and they're saying, 'It's okay, I'm here, I'm here, come with me to the institute.

You are allowed to be alive. You are allowed to be somebody different. You are allowed to not say goodbye to anybody or explain a single thing to anyone, ever.

His laugh is made if porch swings and lemonade

But I can also write in crappy motel rooms, while standing in line, or sitting in the dentist's chair.

I wouldn't want to waste any of my brain cells on forgiving if it's holding me back.

Life had been hard on this girl, Jacob, but she had enough courage for an army.

Thinking is contagious … so choose whom you surround yourself with carefully! Or at least take precautions so as not to infect yourself with other people’s thinking!

Inevitably, Saul's faraway heart would turn to faraway actions.

If I shut my eyes, I believed, I would disappear. To make it through, I had to be present the whole time.

Some of you read with me 40 years ago a portion of Aristotle's Ethics, a selection of passages that describe his idea of happiness. You may not remember too well.

We can change the expression of more than 70 percent of the genes that have a direct bearing on our health and longevity.

As a writer, I challenge myself not to tell the same story - to tackle different characters with different issues.

Fixedness of purpose is the root of all successful efforts.

June, July, all through the warm months she hibernated like a winter animal who did not know spring had come and gone.

Here lay the political genius of Franklin Roosevelt: that in his own time he knew what were the questions that had to be answered, even though he himself did not always find the full answer.