Loneliness is like starvation: you don't realize how hungry you are until you begin to eat.

Memory blurs, that's the point. If memory didn't blur you wouldn't have the fool's courage to do things again, again, again, that tear you apart.

Reading is the sole means by which we slip, involuntarily, often helplessly, into another's skin, another's voice, another's soul.

I never change, I simply become more myself.

How lovely this world is, really: one simply has to look.

Our enemy is by tradition our savior, in preventing us from superficiality.

Read widely, and without apology. Read what you want to read, not what someone tells you you should read.

Night comes to the desert all at once, as if someone turned off the light.

Keep a light, hopeful heart. But ­expect the worst.

See, people come into your life for a reason. They might not know it themselves, why. You might not know it. But there's a reason. There has to be

Be your own editor/critic. Sympathetic but merciless!

Colombians might live in one of best places in the world to grow coffee beans, yet their cups of coffee come from dehydrated granules in tiny plastic packages. This is the definition of tragedy.

Don't look shy if you wear rag and people gag, many are in the grave wearing skeleton, and you should even be happier for wearing a skin without clothes.

Along with success comes a reputation for wisdom.

I feel that I am just a storyteller, and whether I am wearing the director hat or the playwright hat, it doesn't matter.

If you are wearing a bandana you better have something wise to say, because you are starting with a credibility deficit.

You didn't have to worry that marauding bands would come and seize everything in your factory and hire someone to protect against this because of the work the rest of us did.

I do not know a better cure for mental illness than a book.

Now with tabloids and seeing people walking around in sweats pumping gas you're like, 'Okay, they're just like us.'

Take care lest you play the hypocrite by spending all your time trying to get others right before you worship God yourself.

I'm much more into someone who is telling stories than somebody who is writing a record about their breakup. It's just more interesting for me.