If there is no way out, the best course of action is to find a way further in.

In my day, we didn't have self-esteem, we had self-respect, and no more of it than we had earned.

You've either got to find a way to make your continuing characters interesting without making them maudlin or overwrought, or you've got to put more emphasis on the suspects.

Everybody is a True Believer. Everybody has a little nugget they're convinced of that is the opposite of the nugget on the other side. And they're convinced it's fact.

Knowledge pursued for its own sake - that's the definition of education, as opposed to training.

I was the executive editor on a little magazine called Greek Accent, whose only claim to fame is that its art director went on to be the art director of Discover for many years.

Nobody in real life ever takes me seriously.

I don't make my own schedule - it's constructed around my sons' school schedules.

Listen to advice. You don't know how many writer's conferences I've taught at where at least half the audience fights all the conventions of the field.

I've been a teacher at the college level, in composition mostly, and I've been an editor on magazines.

People always seemed to know half of history, and to get it confused with the other half.

The universe, they say, depended for its operation on the balance of four forces which they identified as charm, persuasion, uncertainty, and bloody-mindedness.

When someone we love is snatched from us, it often feels very hard to make plans.Sometimes people feel like they have lost faith in the future, or they become superstitious.

To be simple, be kind. To be free, be non-judgmental. To be happy, be kind and loving.

I didn't want to be on a major label. I wanted all the attention and the noise to go away because I wanted to be something a little bit more substantial.

In the final analysis, change sticks when it becomes the way we do things around here.

I've always taken 'The Wizard of Oz' very seriously, you know. I believe in the idea of the rainbow. And I've spent my entire life trying to get over it.

A race of people is like and individual man; until it uses its own talent, takes pride in its own history, expresses its own culture, affirms its own selfhood, it can never fulfill itself.

There's some familiarity in Celtic music, even if you've never heard that piece of music before.

The least touchable object in the world is the eye.

Activities that seem to represent choices are often inert reproductions of accepted practice.