Monologue is the most honest way to represent human beings.

I tend to foster drama via bleakness. If I want the reader to feel sympathy for a character, I cleave the character in half, on his birthday. And then it starts raining. And he's made of sugar.

What I regret most in my life are failures of kindness.

What I regret most in my life are failures of kindness. Those moments when another human being was there, in front of me, suffering, and I responded . . . sensibly. Reservedly. Mildly.

Do those things that incline you toward the big questions, and avoid the things that would reduce you and make you trivial.

Developing our sympathetic compassion is not only possible but the only reason for us to be here on earth.

According to me, your life is going to be a gradual process of becoming kinder and more loving. Hurry up. Speed it along. Start right now.

It's a big world, and I really like it.

Character is that sum total of moments we can't explain.

The generalizing writer is like the passionate drunk, stumbling into your house mumbling: I know I'm not being clear, exactly, but don't you kind of feel what I'm feeling?

Kindness, it turns out, is hard - it starts out all rainbows and puppy dogs, and expands to include . . . well, EVERYTHING.

What am I but a little flesh, a little breath, and the thinking part that rules the whole?

My darlings, if I can't write dark, epic music, I can't live!

I am not quite sure where home is right now. I do have places in London and Milan, and a house in Spain. I guess I would say home is where my mother is, and she lives in Spain.

When I wrote, I felt better, as if I had remade the world all of a piece, the way I wanted it to be, not the way it was.

Pilgrimages of mind or walking meditation - bringing moments of illumination in which the sense of relationship to the rest of existence suddenly stands out with startling and unexpected clarity.

Faith, indeed, is all the reform that is needed; it is itself a reform.

I ain't never called nobody no redskin. I've never been mad, like, 'Get out of this restaurant, you redskin.'

Conservation is now a dead word.

When creative individuals are given a stage, they have the power to advance humanity

I did not come all this way not to interfere