I write very tightly, and my big fear is boring people. I want them to read quickly, stopped in their tracks. I resist indulging myself.

I've had aunts and uncles who not only haven't read my books but could hardly believe that I was a writer.

I had my bully, and it was excruciating. Not only the bully, but the intimidation I felt.

It's amazing that the heart makes no noise when it cracks.

Everybody sins, Francis. The terrible thing is that we love our sins. We love the thing that makes us evil.

And he did see--that life was rotten, that there were no heroes, really, and that you couldn't trust anybody, not even yourself.

Why did the wise guys always accuse other people of being wise guys?

They don't actually want you to do your own thing, not unless it's their thing too.

I have lived a thousand lives lost within the pages of a book.

The possibility that hope comes out of hopelessness and that the opposite of things carry the seeds of birth - love out of hate, good out of evil. Didn't flowers grow out of dirt?

Affection is one of the most neglected words in the English language, that people throw the word love around like confetti when they mean affection.

People who deal with life generously and large-heartedly go on multiplying relationships to the end.

People will not follow a leader with moral incongruities for long. Every time you compromise character you compromise leadership. The foundation of firm leadership is character.

Duets are not about individual skill but about the relationship between the two players.

Color, even more than drawing, is a means of liberation.

I don't like Moscow. It's not my city.

There are times when life's just real quiet and simple. I sometimes get tired of people saying, "Well, what are you really like?"

... rights are liable to be perverted to wrongs when we are incapable of rightly exercising them.

If you use big words, no one will know you aren't doing jack squat.

We become contemplatives when God discovers Himself in us.

I'm very competitive.