I suspected that there were things he knew that I had been waiting all my life to learn.

Oh, that sound? I'm in the hot tub, reading a novel.

Many people, myself among them, feel better at the mere sight of a book.

Every first draft is perfect, because all a first draft has to do is exist.

In many ways, being honest about 'Huckleberry Finn' goes right to the heart of whether we can be honest about our heritage and our identity as Americans.

Even if my marriage is falling apart and my children are unhappy, there is still a part of me that says, 'God, this is fascinating!'

Take naps. Often new ideas come together when you are half asleep, but you have to train yourself to remember them.

Candy is my fuel. Ice cream, too.

But what truly horsey girls discover in the end is that boyfriends, husbands, children, and careers are the substitute-for horses

In every society, the artists will be the ones who set themselves up as contrary to whatever the society expects.

I'm a natural novelist. I'm interested in the person and the group, and how they mesh. And one of the ways I don't want them to mesh is for the person to be subsumed into the group.

I wouldn't have cared if my girlfriend was a Jaguar-driving Cyclops with a beard - I'd have been grateful just to have someone to make out with.

Use your body language and posture to project confidence. Shift your physiology into a more powerful pose or position and your mindset will follow.

It's not normal, what I do. Just being on television isn't.

We shall not be well so long as we love and admire anything more than we love and admire God.

There's no point in clinging to illusions.

Great businesses turne on a little pinne.

I got my Backstage Bistro Award, I should just retire. You know, that's a good question and I guess it's really really different for everybody.

I'm realising now that I can't just blurt things out.

Didn't you take economics? You could have had me for $49.95.

How can the moribund old man reason back to himself the romance, the mystery, the imminence of great things with which our old earth tingled for him in the days when he was young and well?