If you think about it, fiction is nothing more than gossip about the people you've made up.

I grew up in a house without many books. The books the nuns made us read in school didn't interest me.

In revision, your imagination becomes deeply engaged with your material. It's when you come to know your characters and begin to perceive their motivations and values.

A pure love is a selfless love, but can desire ever be selfless?

The landscape of childhood shapes us as it shapes the characters in our stories. You never forget the sacred places of your childhood.

Drug programs began to turn their attention and money away from prevention and into maintenance. Methadone was cheaper than social workers, I suppose.

A lack of narrative structure, as you know, will cause anxiety.

You lose a wallet or keys or something and you notice in a second, but your life can go missing and you don't even know it.

Every act of loving affirms the goodness of the lover just because he is capable of loving and being loved.

Love is always a surprise and you never get it right.

The purpose of the first draft is not to get it right, but to get it written.

Irreverence is a most necessary ingredient of religion. Not to speak of its importance in philosophy. Irreverence is the only way left to us for testing our universe.

When we blindly focus on what is to come we fail to see the 'now' and it is the 'now' which is our life. Each moment of each day is what we are living. Don’t miss the moments of each day.

Each day, write a thankful note.

A life of conflict and greediness causes a person to suffer from the rheumatism of sadness.

You have more potential in you than you can possibly use up in an entire lifetime or even in several lifetimes. Stop making up excuses and believing in limits.

I got five kids, and my oldest is a documentary film maker and camera man, and still photographer.

All strangers and beggars are from Zeus, and a gift, though small, is precious.

I think I will have a lot of opportunities in the future.

You don't have to be larger than life to be a hero, just larger than yourself.

A moment of disruption is where the conversation about disruption often begins, even though determining that moment is entirely hindsight.