I think it would be harder for me not to write comedy because the comic view of things is the one that comes most naturally to me.

At the risk of appearing disingenuous, I don't really think of myself as 'writing humor.' I'm simply reporting on the world I observe, which is frequently hilarious.

And there comes a time in your life when you realize that if you don't take the opportunity to be happy, you may never get another chance again.

People sometimes get in the habit of being loyal to a mistake.

You use simple brushstrokes in a screenplay for things over which you would take much greater pains in a novel.

Have you ever noticed that when people use the expression 'I have to say', what follows usually needn't be said?

What if all everybody needed in the world was to be sure of one friend? What if you were the one, and you refused to say those simple words?

My books are elegiac in the sense that they're odes to a nation that even I sometimes think may not exist anymore except in my memory and my imagination.

Worse, I have to admit to feeling the jealousy of one crab for another that has managed to climb out of the barrel.

Bookstores, like libraries, are the physical manifestation of the wide world's longest, most thrilling conversation.

I was the one who did come through that door. You were the one she was waiting for.

It is an alarming experience to be, in your person, representing Christianity to the natives.

The willingness to be a champion for stupid ideas is the key to greater creativity, innovation, fulfillment, inspiration, motivation and success.

Might the peasant expect the Almighty to stay the thunder storm, which clears the air of a nation from pestilence, lest the lightning bold should in its flash kill his cow?

The stakes in conflict do not change. Battle determines who will control the wealth or its equivalent.

Rap music is just computerised crap. I listen to Top of the Pops and after three songs I feel like killing someone.

Governments are run by people. People can be bad.

I didn't know I could sing until I auditioned for 'Les Miserables.' My friend was auditioning, and I wanted to audition too.

Meaning is man-created. And because you constantly look for meaning, you start to feel meaninglessness.

To fail to pray, then, is not to merely break some religious rule- it is a failure to treat God as God.

Free people have a serious problem with place, being in a place, using up a place, deciding which new place to rotate to. Americans ricochet around the United States like billiard balls.