Our human impulse is to control everything, but fiction seems to me to be about allowing an element of mystery into the text.

As a person, I do ascribe to a lot of magical thinking myself.

In the end, fiction is the craft of telling truth through lies.

While writing, writers are living inside a character or characters, and when the book ekes into the world, writers are living inside the reader. That's more than connecting.

Amor animi arbitrio sumitu, non ponitur; we choose to love; we do not choose to cease loving.

Who, in the midst of passion, is vigilant against illness? Who listens to the reports of recently decimated populations in Spain, India, Bora Bora, when new lips, tongues and poems fill the world?

If there's a black cat that crosses the street in my path, I will turn around and walk 20 minutes out of my way to not cross it.

Depressing thought: my friends were the girls I ate lunch with, all buddies from kindergarten who knew one another so well we weren't sure if we even liked one another anymore.

Sometimes you have to let time carry you past your troubles.

I'm a private person, a shy person. Sometimes, reading for eleven hours straight feels to me like the perfect way to spend a day.

I love Twitter. It's like having a closet full of clever friends that you can visit twice a day, then shove back into the darkness when you're tired of them.

Hey, Carrots, " he says.

We can all benefit by learning to express and meet out physical needs in a loving, caressing and compassionate way

I wish you did return my regard, " he said. "More than I have ever wished anything in my life! Perhaps you may yet learn to do so: I should warn you that I don't easily despair!

Never before in our country's history has a generation been so empowered, so wealthy, so privileged - and yet so empty.

If I don't feel right about what I'm in, I don't feel right about anything.

I can’t see myself pursuing acting strictly outside of what I’m contractually obligated to do.

There are no 'ifs' in God's Kingdom. His timing is perfect. His will is our hiding place. Lord Jesus, keep me in Your will! Don't let me go mad by poking about outside it.

It seems people spend the majority of their lives believing they're dying, with the only consolation being that at one point they get to be right.

People conquered on different sides of the lake should be ruled on different sides of the lake.

Walking is a way of being somewhere, rather than striving to arrive.