I think it's very hard to be sexually explicit and erotic - though there are writers, like K. M. Soehnlein, who are just brilliant at this.

I don't think virtue has a downside. I think human nature does.

When you write, you're supposed to go stand somewhere else for a while, see things from a perspective that's not in line with your own reflexive truths.

I've always hated quotation marks: they're ugly on the page and they classify the text for you, putting dialogue in one box and narration in another.

I have to trick myself into writing a story - impose some arbitrary constraint to distract me from the constraints of my past habits or my fear that I don't have much to say.

If you cross-section anyone's life from one angle and then another, what constitutes goodness looks different each time. It's not an absolute.

You have to be able to play: this is spontaneous interaction, and it flexes all the creative muscles you need as a writer. And empathy is one of those muscles.

What is their real problem? Is it the fear or is it what they do after feeling it?

Forgiving others simply means that you refuse to be a prisoner of a past that you can't change, and shackled to decisions that you didn't make.

Somtimes silence can be the loudest thing.

During the 24/7 grind of being a carer, it's all to easy to forget the fact that the person you're doing so much for is, and is obliged to be, more resourceful than you in many respects.

When I moved to the East Village in the late seventies, I wanted to be a street performer, so I practiced daily. I never did work up the skills or the courage to perform on the street, though.

The future depends entirely on what each of us does every day a movement is only people moving.

Mystical bliss, joy and rapture arises when you realize the inner Sun.

The real quality of our life is not determined by what we have won from it, but by what we have discovered within it.

The boor covers himself, the rich man or the fool adorns himself, and the elegant man gets dressed.

The man who has nothing to boast of but his illustrious ancestry is like the potato. The best part is underground.