I wanted to be curious and smart and unappeasable until I got a sentence to mean exactly what I ordered it to mean.

There is no teacher more discriminating or transforming than loss.

Love had always issued out of the places that hurt the most.

Good coaching is good teaching and nothing else.

Basketball allowed me to revere my father without him knowing what I was up to. I took up basketball as a form of homage and mimicry.

If not for sports, I do not think my father would have ever talked to me.

Fierce praying was a way of finding entrance and prologue into my own writing.

Gonzaga was the kind of place you’d not even think about loving until you’d left it for a couple of years.

An author must gorge himself on ten thousand images to select the magical one that can define a piece of the world in a way one has never considered before.

We photograph things in order to drive them out of our minds. My stories are a way of shutting my eyes.

In a second-hand bookshop head to the back, find the old books with dust undisturbed and worn off covers for these clothe true treasures.

True coolness is the incidental by-product of higher pursuits.

Caricature: putting the face of a joke upon the body of a truth.

Those who prefer their English sloppy have only themselves to thank if the advertisement writer uses his mastery of the vocabulary and syntax to mislead their weak minds.

I think Marco Rubio could never have recovered from revealing himself to be pathetic.

I never accepted a knighthood because to me, is honour enough?

The Garden Was My Delight. I grew up with gardeners and I just love gardens. I was always very much aware that gardens were important and they were for sharing.

If there is no peace in the minds of individuals, how can there be peace in the world? Make peace in your own mind first.

You can go a month without food, you can live three days without water, but you can't go more then sixty seconds without HOPE.