It's easier to write about a place sometimes when you've left it, when you can apply your imagination to your memory and let your emotions guide the writing about a place.

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.

You can’t has, ' he whispered softly, 'not yours.

I had met a young lady who wanted to be in the theater. It was Judy Holliday. She had somehow fallen down the steps of the Village Vanguard, which still exists today.

Every man is destined to win. Whether he wins or not is determined by whether or not he aligns himself with God's will.

Defining myself, as opposed to being defined by others, is one of the most difficult challenges I face.

A white boy that makes C's in college can make it to the White House.

There is one single thread binding my way together...the way of the Master consists in doing one's best...that is all.

A life of wholeness does not depend on what we experience. Wholeness depends on how we experience our lives.

I came home for a week after I finished filming Rambo because, after being in the jungle for three months, all I wanted to do was walk in the Highlands.

Motherhood informs my work 100 per cent.

Accepting what we're given is a practice in being present to everything beyond us that lets us become intimate with the nature of life.