My first novel, 'Man Walks Into a Room,' is about a man who's lost his memory and has to start a second life. On one level, it's about how we create a coherent sense of self.

...we take comfort in the symmetries we find in life because they suggest a design where there is none.

Once upon a time there was a boy who loved a girl, and her laughter was a question he wanted to spend his whole life answering.

there are two types of people in the world: those who prefer to be sad among others, and those who prefer to be sad alone.

What about you? Are you happiest and saddest right now that you've ever been?" "Of course I am." "Why?" "Because nothing makes me happier and nothing makes me sadder than you.

She struggled with her sadness, but tried to conceal it, to divide it into smaller and smaller parts and scatter these in places she thought no one would find them.

To hike out alone in the desert; to sleep on the valley floor on a night with no moon, in the pitch black, just listening to the boom of silence: you can't imagine what that's like.

That's what I do. Watch movies and read. Sometimes I even pretend to write, but I'm not fooling anyone. Oh, and I go to the mailbox.

When will you learn that there isn't a word for everything?

I've reached the age where bruises are formed from failures within rather than accidents without.

So many words get lost. They leave the mouthand lose their courage, wandering aimlessly until they are swept into the gutter like dead leaves. On rainy days you can hear their chorus rushing past.

When I was young I found out that the big toe always ends up making a hole in a sock. So I stopped wearing socks.

On the soft bed of luxury many kingdoms have expired.

Hatred which is completely vanquished by love passes into love: and love is thereupon greater than if hatred had not preceded it.

Believe me, when I say; There are no two powers That command the soul. One is God The other is the tide. -Anon From the novel Abarat

A rower knows the underlying presence that moves a boat; it is quite simply force and energy. The force needs to be penetrating, and the energy needs to be driving and uninhibited.

The principle I believe in is the principle of protecting our nation. I believe that the United States has the right to attack any country it views as a threat at a time and place of its choosing.

Moderate sorrow Fits vulgar love, and for a vulgar man: But I have lov'd with such transcendent passion, I soar'd, at first, quite out of reason's view, And now am lost above it.

You need, as a historian, essential triangulation from your subject and the only way you get that triangulation is through time.

Do you think a man is the only creature with whom one may fall in love?

This very moment I may, if I desire, become the friend of God.