It was not about the sea or the sand, but burying her feet there had seemed to cure what had worried her...

Language is the writer's only tool - we really don't have anything else - but our language contains within it our entire experience of the world.

We are surrounded by story.

A good writer sells out everybody he knows, sooner or later.

Guilt is glorious when it's well earned.

Heightism is the last unchecked prejudice.

The writing itself is the thing that generates stories for me.

When I'm not writing, I can't make sense of out anything. I feel the need to make some sense and find some order, and writing fiction is the only way I've found that seems to begin to do that.

I'd like to be better at short, snappy answers.

Without explaining why, and, most of all, without naming other authors or books, I can only say my novels are influenced by love and death.

We are at the mercy of time, and for all the ways we are remembered, a sea of things will be lost. But how much is contained in what lingers!

Tis in ourselves that we are thus or thus. Our bodies are our gardens to the which our wills are gardeners.

That is true strength. To want what you have, and not what someone else is holding.

Poor Hayduke: won all his arguments but lost his immortal soul.

...uncorny, human sized drama

he made the poor choice of deciding that he couldn't live either. You can make a better choice. You can choose to get up and live.

Parenting is no sport for perfectionists.

...black music is a group music. That's why I don't like doing a solo saxophone thing: My feeling stems from rhythm, I really have to feel that rhythmic thing happening.

The important man is not the artist, but the businessman who, in the marketplace and on the battlefield, holds the reins in his hands.

Directing offers you the hope that your vision will reach the screen, unmolested and intact. Therefore, it's tantalizing to all writers.

I'm not building a game. I'm building a new country.