In fiction workshops, we tend to focus on matters of verisimilitude largely because such issues are so much easier to talk about than the failure of imagination.

But the thing about remembering is that you don't forget.

With a hangover and with fear, it is difficult to put a helmet on your head.

They carried the sky. The whole atmosphere, they carried it, the humidity, the monsoons, the stink of fungus and decay, all of it, they carried gravity.

Men killed, and died, because they were embarrassed not to.

Fiction is the lie that helps us understand the truth.

I want you to feel what I felt. I want you to know why story-truth is truer sometimes than happening-truth.

[Y]ou can tell a true war story by its absolute and uncompromising allegiance to obscenity and evil.

Laughter does not deny pain. Laughter - like a wail - acknowledges and replies to pain.

Why do our politicians put warnings on cigarette packs and not on their own foreheads?

It's a hard thing to explain to somebody who hasn't felt it, but the presence of death and danger has a way of bringing you fully awake. It makes things vivid.

It's too cold outsideFor angels to flyAn angel will dieCovered in whiteClosed eyeAnd hoping for a better lifeThis time, we'll fade out tonightStraight down the line

The right mixture of caring and not caring - I suppose that's what love is.

Art for art's sake.

Medicare in particular, will run out of money, and we will not be able to sustain that program.

I shall have to believe even though I cannot understand.

If someone comes to you and asks for help, and you can help them, you're supposed to help them. Why wouldn't you? You have been put in the position somehow to be able to help this person.

My mom always told me that if you work hard, you can achieve anything. And it's true. It's one of the truest things ever.

No vice is so bad as advice.

The human spirit must transcend number and break through multiplicity, and God will break through him; and just as He

Acting is my calling. It is one of the things I was meant to do in this world, along with being a mother.