My heart went out, seeking the God of my people. In thousands of homes those white candles burned tonight. I joined an invisible congregation.

Freedom is dearer than bread or joy.

It is the lumps and trialsThat tell us whether we shall be knownAnd whether our fate can be exemplary, like a star.

Two of my three siblings are older, so I suppose I learned from them and became a very avid reader at a young age, which I think enough cannot be said for what you can discover through literature.

When a beginner wins he feels brilliant and invincible Then he takes wild risk and loses everything.

Poems aren't postcards to send home.

My mother, father, stepmother and surrogate mother have all died of cancer; my best friend has got terminal cancer and at least five of my other friends have had cancer but survived it.

Fiction structures an experience for the reader to live through. ... That is why people read: to have experiences.

We're just musically and rhythmically retarded. We play so hard that we can't tune our guitars fast enough. People can relate to that.

We enjoy sailing small boats, two of which I have designed and built myself.

I am worth something and I will be big.

And out of a desire essentially to imitate what I was reading, I began to write, like a clever monkey.