Just like all great stories, our fears focus our attention on a question that is as important in life as it is in literature: What will happen next?

How much sweeter life would be if it all happened in reverse, if, after decades of disappointments, you finally arrived at an age when you had conceded nothing, when everything was possible.

I first started writing fiction in college because I was attracted to beautiful sentences. I loved to read them. I wanted to write them.

Fear is ... a kind of unintentional storytelling that we are all born knowing how to do.

But the past is long, and the future is short.

It requires a certain kind of bravery, I suppose, to choose the status quo. There's a certain boldness to inaction.

We were a different kind of Christian, the quiet, reasonable kind, a breed embarrassed by the mention of miracles.

I can write all the way through the morning, when my mind is clear, and there are no distractions.

To some degree we all live with uncertainty. We have no control over the future. Yet we carry on, we persevere, because, I guess, it's the way we're made.

My goal was just to tell the unlikely story in a way that would feel as convincing as possible.

I guess it never is what you worry over that comes to pass in the end. The real catastrophes are always different—unimagined, unprepared for, unknown.

I abandon myself to the fever of dreams, in search for new laws.

I don't believe in right or left; I don't believe in Santa or Satan. I believe in things I can touch - like vodka and Oreos.

No one ever heard of the truth being enforced by law. When the secular is called in to sustain an idea, whether new or old, it is always a bad idea, and not infrequently it is downright idiotic.

Whom little things occupy and keep busy, are little men.

Happy slaves are the bitterest enemies of freedom.

Armani is a fashion house that I think is iconic and beautiful.

Here lies Matthew Mudd, Death did him no hurt; When alive he was only Mudd, But now he's only dirt.

The ideal way to win a championship is step by step.

Life is first boredom, then fear.

I didn't want to be in a Pepsi commercial with R2-D2 sitting on my shoulder.