If you write a story based on a real person, you're trapped by the details of the real person and his life. It gets in the way of writing your own story.

I decided to write short stories because they got rejected quicker.

Breakfast was only worth having when somebody else made it for you.

People think they own time. They have watches and clocks and digital pulses. But they are wrong. Time owns them.

People nearly always believe, and are willing to back it up with weapons and cruelty, that their religion and way of life is better than the other person's

I approach serious subjects, and I like to have the good guys win and have the parents among the good guys

I love writing and do not know why it is considered such a difficult, agonizing profession.

My favorite book is always the one I'm working on at the moment

I wrote eight full-length adult novels in my twenties. None of them were published

Actually my first eight books were historical novels, but they were never published

in Los Angeles ... was the thinking-est crowd on earth: how to get ahead, how to mold a better body, how to have a better relationship, how to score, earn, fight, win, get published, be a star.

He is Romeo, and he is heartbroken. Every word is wistful. When he says, 'O, teach me how I should forget to think!' I, for the first time, see what the big deal is about Shakespeare.

I don't mind telling a dark side.

Jesus’ words are inseparable from his person. He himself is the message he proclaims.

Men there are, who having quite done with the world, all its merely worldly contents are become so far indifferent, that they carelittle of what mere worldly imprudence they may be guilty.

Truth isn’t in accounts but in account-books.

As we know, our own mother bore us only into pain and dying. But our true mother, Jesus, who is all love, bears us into joy and endless living. Blessed may he be.

Have you ever tried to get to your feet with a sprained dignity?

Economy is a great revenue. [Lat., Magnum vectigal est parsimonia.]

To behave rightly, we ourselves should never lay a hand on our servants as long as our anger lasts. Things will seem different to us when we have quieted and cooled down.

The intellectual tradition is one of servility to power, and if I didn't betray it I'd be ashamed of myself.