Sometimes I think the difference between what we want and what we're afraid of is about the width of an eyelash.

I think men talk to women so they can sleep with them and women sleep with men so they can talk to them.

I'd like to have the kind of house someday where a carousel horse wouldn't be out of place in the living room.

The capacity for friendship is God's way of apologizing for our families.

Delia's arms were inscribed with a grid of self- inflicted wounds, an intricate text of self-loathing

There's a socialist bias to the consensus of the literary world: a '30s mentality that says factory workers are more worthy of our attention.

I like the fact that I'm living in the world rather than in a university.

If it's red, French, costs too much, and tastes like the water that's left in the vase after the flowers have died and rotted, it's probably Burgundy.

Reading a novel is just a much more involving and intimate experience than the act of watching a film. I mean, you literally get inside of a novelist's head, and you invest many hours to do so.

The most interesting things that happen in my books are usually the things that arise spontaneously, the things that surprise me.

Most novelists I know went through a period of intense self-examination and self-loathing after the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center. I certainly did.

To really be of help to others we need to be guided by compassion.

Adversity is like the period of the rain ... cold comfortless unfriendly to man and to animal yet from that season have their birth the flower the fruit the date the rose and the pomegranate.

I've lived the American dream. I was born and raised on the farm, first in my family to graduate from college. I spent 13 years working in our family business.

The way the world sees women vs. men is a subject that really interests me.

It is the logical next step in our ongoing effort to shift our company's centre of gravity, accelerate our growth

I think most people now listen to different genres when they have different moods. I know I certainly do.

What can and doesn't have to be always, at the end, surrenders to something that has to be.

I'm ashamed that Congress finds billions for pork-barrel subsidies but fails to find money for veterans' health care.

God grant me the serenity to accept that people are ignorant, the courage to uphold the law when I'm hostile, & the wisdom to realize that murder is illegal.

All men who live with any degree of serenity live by some assurance of grace.