If I've done my work well, I vanish completely from the scene. I believe it is invasive of the work when you know too much about the writer.

it is a serious thing // just to be alive / on this fresh morning / in this broken world.

Someone I loved once gave me a box full of darkness. It took me years to understand that this too, was a gift.

I don't ask for the sights in front of me to change, only the depth of my seeing.

Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?

Instructions for living a life. Pay attention. Be astonished. Tell about it.

One day you finally knew what you had to do, and began.

Keep some room in your heart for the unimaginable.

You do not have to be good. You do not have to walk on your knees for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting. You only have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves.

In this universe we are given two gifts: the ability to love and the ability to question. Which are, at the same time, the fires that warm us and the fires that scorch us.

You must not ever stop being whimsical. And you must not, ever, give anyone else the responsibility for your life.

The best way to cheer yourself is to try to cheer someone else up.

Language comes first. It's not that language grows out of consciousness, if you haven't got language, you can't be conscious.

Heads of state are notoriously ill prepared for their mature careers; think of Adolf Hitler (landscape painter), Ho Chi Minh (seaman), and our own Ronald Reagan.

You had a lot of novice investors who got into the market looking for easy money, without any regard to the fundamentals. These stocks were running on fumes.

Would you like me to go and stick my head in a bucket of water?

I was convinced that the only thing I wanted to do ever - was write novels.

Who will save your soul, if you won’t save your own?

We'll meet you here. Hopefully everyone will be in human form." A wry smile. "Though I'll warn you, he's not a whole lot more pleasant that way. At least as a wolf, he can't talk.

Do you have to have emotional turmoil to create music? I'm not sure because I've never been without it

I don't like working - I just like having done the end product. The process, I like to make it quick and painful.