I simply write with an intelligent reader in mind. I don't think about how old they are.

I've had aunts and uncles who not only haven't read my books but could hardly believe that I was a writer.

I had my bully, and it was excruciating. Not only the bully, but the intimidation I felt.

It's amazing that the heart makes no noise when it cracks.

Everybody sins, Francis. The terrible thing is that we love our sins. We love the thing that makes us evil.

And he did see--that life was rotten, that there were no heroes, really, and that you couldn't trust anybody, not even yourself.

Why did the wise guys always accuse other people of being wise guys?

They don't actually want you to do your own thing, not unless it's their thing too.

I have lived a thousand lives lost within the pages of a book.

The possibility that hope comes out of hopelessness and that the opposite of things carry the seeds of birth - love out of hate, good out of evil. Didn't flowers grow out of dirt?

Affection is one of the most neglected words in the English language, that people throw the word love around like confetti when they mean affection.

Among the lessons I learned on Hajj was that I needed to be mindful and keep the inner connection with God at all times and that self-improvement is definitely a never-ending struggle.

Sometimes it's good to start over

Even though you're not my type, gender wise, you're certainly my type, person-wise.

So vast is art, so narrow human wit.

Celebrate each season, for you too, are transformed with the turns of the earth.

Riches without charity are nothing worth. They are a blessing only to him who makes them a blessing to others.

Hold to the now, the here, through which all future plunges to the past.

A man is born an artist as a hippopotamus is born a hippopotamus; and you can no more make yourself one than you can make yourself a giraffe.

My entire career has been pivoting from company to company. Some people call it lack of planning or direction, I call it flexibility and good improvisational skills.

If I get a parking ticket, there is always a parallel universe where I didn't. On the other hand, there is yet another universe where my car was stolen.