I see a lot of marriages crash and burn around me and my wife. I've always been curious about how hard it is to love well and be loved.

I think the deeper you go into questions, the deeper or more interesting the questions get. And I think that's the job of art.

One of the things I learned about writing a memoir is you can’t drag the reader through everything. Every human life is worth 20 memoirs.

Fear is a ghost; embrace your fear, and all you’ll see in your arms is yourself.

As a matter of writing philosophy, if there is one, I try not to ever plot a story. I try to write it from the character's point of view and see where it goes.

I've learned over the years that the writing is smarter and far larger than the writer and his or her own desires for it.

I have always known that writing fiction had little effect on the world; that if it did, young men would not have gone to war after The Iliad.

Somewhere, sometime I'd stopped expecting my father to father.

I read poetry every day. I love the boiled down essence of poetry. I look for poetry in prose. In a way that evocative.

What is art if not a concentrated and impassioned effort to make something with the little we have, the little we see?

My mother was making $135 a week, but she had resilience and imagination. She might take frozen vegetables, cook them with garlic, onion and Spam, and it would taste like a four-star dinner.

Moonlight drowns out all but the brightest stars.

Our memories are what make us who we are. Some are real. Some are made up. But they are the stories that tell us who we are. Without them we are nobody.

This day is the most recent set of events to define you. Every day changes your life. Every last one.

I believe only foreigners should run for president...Face it, the presidency is a lousy job. And who does lousy jobs we don't want anymore better than foreigners?

A developer is someone who wants to build a house in the woods. An environmentalist is someone who already has a house in the woods.

Remember you belong to nature, not it to you.

There was no "decision" per se to re-position myself. I simply decided that I wanted to write a book that would help people influence others.

I'm inspired by watching and listening to people. For example, my first novel, The Scale, came to life after I overheard two women discussing their struggle with their weight at the gym.

There's no reason to do anything twice, and certainly no reason to do something that almost killed you.

I'd rather lie down than jump up.