If we do not fight to create a future there will be no future for any of us.

Writing's a lot like cooking. Sometimes the cake won't rise, no matter what you do, and every now and again the cake tastes better than you ever could have dreamed it would.

We wrapped our dreams in words and patterned the words so that they would live forever, unforgettable.

Do not lose hope — what you seek will be found. Trust ghosts. Trust those that you have helped to help you in their turn. Trust dreams. Trust your heart, and trust your story. (from 'Instructions')

Recounting the strange is like telling one's dreams: one can communicate the events of a dream, but not the emotional content, the way that a dream can colour one's entire day.

Know that diamonds and roses are as uncomfortable when they tumble from one's lips as toads and frogs: colder, too, and sharper, and they cut.

On the whole, stories don't write themselves.

Never use five words if you can get away with one, eh? I've known dead men talk more than you do.

I was not so old that I would deny my own senses.

I believe we owe it to each other to tell stories. It's as close to a credo as I have or will, I suspect, ever get.

Because stories start in minds-- they aren't artifacts or natural phenomena.

Why, when you have a mental disease, is it always considered an act of imagination? Why is it that every organ in your body can get sick and you get sympathy except the brain?

It always matters who the storyteller is. It’s a lens.

I came from a dysfunctional family - very dysfunctional. And my father used to find great humor in throwing me down the stairs.

I actually don't have a view on whether someone watching certain material that may be legal in some places, but might be obscene to somebody else, can trigger a violent streak in someone.

Regardless of our age, experience, or station in life, we are all missionaries.

I love you for all that you are, all that you have been, all that you're yet to be.

A man's only as old as the woman he feels.

We are in a survival mentality, and that's hard-wired into our humanity, because we are the winners of an evolutionary struggle of millions and millions and millions of years.

In 1947 I married Rowena Palmer, and we have two daughters, Alison and Claire, and a son, John.

I really wanted to be an opera soprano.