Sentences or solutions occur to me in the shower, or while running on the treadmill, or riding on the subway.

How much sweeter life would be if it all happened in reverse, if, after decades of disappointments, you finally arrived at an age when you had conceded nothing, when everything was possible.

I first started writing fiction in college because I was attracted to beautiful sentences. I loved to read them. I wanted to write them.

Fear is ... a kind of unintentional storytelling that we are all born knowing how to do.

Just like all great stories, our fears focus our attention on a question that is as important in life as it is in literature: What will happen next?

But the past is long, and the future is short.

It requires a certain kind of bravery, I suppose, to choose the status quo. There's a certain boldness to inaction.

We were a different kind of Christian, the quiet, reasonable kind, a breed embarrassed by the mention of miracles.

I can write all the way through the morning, when my mind is clear, and there are no distractions.

To some degree we all live with uncertainty. We have no control over the future. Yet we carry on, we persevere, because, I guess, it's the way we're made.

My goal was just to tell the unlikely story in a way that would feel as convincing as possible.

You can know all there is to know about life and mankind, but what do you really know about yourself?

I've never thought much of strictly organised and methodical study. You can't arrange a library in alphabetical order until you've collected one.

There's no secret on how to attain a greater height, just keep climbing the ladder, don't look at the dreadful distance, lock up that negative thoughts today, and fulfil your dreams.

A pessimist finds the darkness around the light but an optimist becomes the light in the darkness.

Everything, I think, about acting is based on imagination.

You can't do some of the things you used to do. I suppose you have to go at a gentler pace. I mean, God help us, you can't sit at home being a Vicar or anything.

All that is left is to us is our being horrified at the loss of our sense of horror.

Events do not really have beginnings or ends. Behind every event is the previous one, causing, or helping to cause, what follows.

I never went to fashion school. I didn't know what a designer was. I knew I had something, but I didn't know what it was. And it could just have easily been nothing.