I've had that my whole career. People were always hedging around the question of: Why are you so dark? What happened to you?

I tend to foster drama via bleakness. If I want the reader to feel sympathy for a character, I cleave the character in half, on his birthday. And then it starts raining. And he's made of sugar.

What I regret most in my life are failures of kindness.

What I regret most in my life are failures of kindness. Those moments when another human being was there, in front of me, suffering, and I responded . . . sensibly. Reservedly. Mildly.

Do those things that incline you toward the big questions, and avoid the things that would reduce you and make you trivial.

Developing our sympathetic compassion is not only possible but the only reason for us to be here on earth.

According to me, your life is going to be a gradual process of becoming kinder and more loving. Hurry up. Speed it along. Start right now.

It's a big world, and I really like it.

Character is that sum total of moments we can't explain.

The generalizing writer is like the passionate drunk, stumbling into your house mumbling: I know I'm not being clear, exactly, but don't you kind of feel what I'm feeling?

Kindness, it turns out, is hard - it starts out all rainbows and puppy dogs, and expands to include . . . well, EVERYTHING.

Making money isn't hard in itself, what's hard is to earn it doing something worth devoting your life to

Such actions are beyond praise: it is the perfume of such sweet and noble human sympathy that makes this wild beasts' cage a world habitable for men.

Charity begins at home.

It's but little good you'll do a-watering the last year's crops

I had a notepad and I wrote down 30 things to make myself better just off the top of my head, and the next day I started to do that.

Don't idolize me, idolize yourself.

It is of great advantage that man should know his station, and not imagine that the whole universe exists only for him.

Free enterprise means that the more enterprising you are, the freer you are.

If I have a talent, it's already been exploited! I've shown everything I can do to the public.

It is better to give blood but receive cash than the other way around.