Like all enjoyable things, you see, it has unenjoyable parts to it.

The road to hell is paved with works-in-progress.

I cannot and do not live in the world of discretion, not as a writer, anyway. I would prefer to, I assure you - it would make life easier. But discretion is, unfortunately, not for novelists.

He had learned the worst lesson that life can teach - that it makes no sense.

You can no more make someone tell the truth than you can force someone to love you.

Old age isn't a battle; old age is a massacre.

The horror of being caged has lost its thrill.

Everybody else is working to change, persuade, tempt and control them. The best readers come to fiction to be free of all that noise.

I have a slogan I use when I get anxious writing, which happens quite a bit: ‘the ordeal is part of the commitment.’ It’s one of my mantras. It makes a lot of things doable.

When the whole world doesn't believe in God, it'll be a great place.

Because that is when you love somebody - when you see them being game in the face of the worst. Not courageous. Not heroic. Just game.

Loneliness and the feeling of being unwanted is the most terrible poverty.

Want to dance? We have music this time. And I don't have to punch you when we finish.

A poem is a ‘line’ between any two points in creation.

We will go no place where we cannot take our Master with us. While others take their liberty to sin, We will not renounce our liberty to rebuke and confront them.

We look at science as something very elite, which only a few people can learn. That's just not true. You just have to start early and give kids a foundation. Kids live up, or down, to expectations.

System debugging has always been a graveyard-shift occupation, like astronomy.

I take responsibility for what happened at Enron, both good and bad. But I cannot take responsibility for criminal conduct that I was unaware of.

The secret to happiness, at Thanksgiving or any time, is to reframe obligation as opportunity. You don't have to spend Thanksgiving with your family. You get to.

You have to give it to the Packers. They are a good team. They have a great offense and a great defense.

If I could run like Mantle I'd hit .400 every year!