I wanted to write about the Korean War, but I had no entry into it that made the kind of sense it needs to make for a novelist.

For sometimes you can't help but crave some ruin in what you love.

It is 'where we are' that should make all the difference, whether we believe we belong there or not.

The truth, finally, is who can tell it.

As for what's the most challenging aspect of teaching, it's convincing younger writers of the importance of reading widely and passionately.

So my first book I had no experience having written a book, but each book is a little snapshot of who you are at that moment, accrued all through time, so I accept that.

In this difficult era the most valuable commodity is the unfailing turn of the hours and how they retrieve for us the known harbor of yesterday.

They're not parallel at all. They're my concerns, but how they're expressed particularly on the page is completely divorced from who I am in my street life.

Don’t sanctuaries become prisons, and vice versa, foremost in the mind?

Imagination might not be limitless. It's still tethered to the universe of what we know.

For at some point, each of us will be asked to embody what we feel and know.

Give me wildflowers instead of your heart, for I’d rather have them wither than the latter.

To use good things to our own ends is always a false religion

Music is God's gift to man, the only art of Heaven given to earth, the only art of earth we take to Heaven.

Universal vaccination may well be the greatest success story in medical history.

I love my films. I have stacks and stacks of DVDs. I put Last of the Mohicans on the other day with Daniel Day-Lewis. It hurts me to say it because he's a Millwall fan, but I think he's fantastic.

When you eneter into samadhi and seek to make that magical walk between salvikalpa and nirvikalpa samadhi, it's necessary to focus your awareness not on being or nonbeing.

Beware the person who is on a hot streak.

And Christ says of that which is blessed, which is offered, received, eaten and drunk: This is My body; this is My blood.

The president has declared that the debate over government-controlled health care is over. That will come as news to the millions of Americans who will elect Mitt Romney so we can repeal Obamacare.

To hell with the cost, if it's a good story, I'll make it.