I think the most dangerous influence for a young writer is to be treated with cynicism or discouragement.

I just knew I would be a writer. It just seemed the only sensible thing to do.

Somewhere inside we do know everything about ourselves. There is no real forgetting. Perhaps we know somewhere, too, about all there is to come.

I gave myself to my children. It happens to some women.

If you've not been loved as a child, you don't know how to love a child.

Jane Austen we know never let two men converse alone in any novel because what they said would be unknown to her.

English country life is more like Chekhov than The Archers or Thomas Hardy or even the Updike ethic with which it is sometimes compared.

Laywers, I suppose, were children once.

All my life I have felt events to be the result of my own sins.

Thinking is not a thing that can undo itself. It can never be its own solution.

Do you want to make progress? If so, then take each problem not as a challenging rival, but as an encouraging friend of yours, who is helping you to arrive at your ultimate destination.

Jesus came to be the light for the world, and then there's the Christmas star and the idea of letting your light shine...But not blinding your neighbor with it.

Your computer monitor is a kind a one-way mirror, reflecting your own interests while algorithmic observers watch what you click.

ACKNOWLEDGE, v.t. To confess. Acknowledgment of one another's faults is the highest duty imposed by our love of truth.

I like dark, dramatic roles; they're just really powerful and real.

Doing things you're passionate about, with an intention of helping others, will make you an all around richer person.

The world at large does not judge us by who we are and what we know; it judges us by what we have.

He who lays up treasures in heaven looks forward to eternity

I've never found kicks to the groin particularly funny, although recent work in the genre of the buddy movie suggests audience research must prove me wrong.