I thought that you had to learn to write by yourself and if you couldn't do it, then you were out of luck.

Donkeys are the most misunderstood and abused animals around the world.

I think by writing about a place with great specificity, you manage to make it universal.

I worked probably fewer jobs than most people, or fewer real soul-killing jobs than other people. I've been a typist, a typesetter, a keyliner, cappuccino-maker. I think I've been pretty lucky.

My donkeys are Jack and Don Quixote. They're very smart, very cautious. Much of what people consider stubbornness in donkeys is actually cautiousness.

As a writer, I can live somewhat independently, occupying nooks and crannies and finding meaning there. I can even live in my mind a good portion of most days.

A mathematical proof is beautiful, but when you're finished, it's really only about one thing. A story can be about many things.

That's where I live, a junkyard in a neighborhood of junkyards. We have three tractors from the 1940s and '50s, several old pickup trucks, and a pile of scrap metal.

I have a second-degree black belt in Okinawan kobudo weapons training.

Time is never wasted coming to an old man bar.

I grew up with donkeys, as well as horses, but I'm more interested in donkeys.

Why would any writer in her right mind ever consider making a movie instead? That's like going from being a monk or a nun to serving as a camp counselor for hundreds of problem children.

There is an accumulative cruelty in a number of men, though none in particular are ill-natured.

From my very first day as an entrepreneur, I've felt the only mission worth pursuing in business is to make people's lives better.

Breath mints and Chapstick are key if you want to have a good kiss.

I'm kind of old-fashioned in a lot of ways. I prefer mano a mano. Even if you have two girls in the house, it's not like we're together all the time. But I need variety.

Languages are the keys of science.

I also work out because I have scoliosis. I have to maintain certain strength in my core.

I'm a Christian, and those beliefs occasionally come out in the books.

Find the one thing you’re good at and FOCUS on it.

God's precepts are light to the loving, heavy to the fearful.