Somewhere in him, a shadow turned mournfully over. You had to run with a night like this so the sadness could not hurt

You don't have to burn books to destroy a culture. Just get people to stop reading them.

Living at risk is jumping off the cliff and building your wings on the way down.

Jump, and you will find out how to unfold your wings as you fall.

Looking back over a lifetime, you see that love was the answer to everything.

Don't think. Thinking is the enemy of creativity. It's self-conscious, and anything self-conscious is lousy. You can't try to do things. You simply must do things.

Sometimes you just have to jump out the window and grow wings on the way down.

I know you've heard it a thousand times before. But it's true - hard work pays off. If you want to be good, you have to practice, practice, practice. If you don't love something, then don't do it.

Insanity is relative. It depends on who has who locked in what cage.

You must stay drunk on writing so reality cannot destroy you.

Write a short story every week. It's not possible to write 52 bad short stories in a row.

Of all sad words of tongue or pen, the saddest are these, 'It might have been.

Many have exchanged the touch of God for the applause of men

And so their memories took on potential, which is of course how our greatest nostalgias are born.

You're mine, Pagan Moore. You will always be mine.

My mom, Emilie, always taught me to think hard about marriage.

I think there's an instinct to make grotesque horror films that are purely carnal, like the 'Saw' movies.

Life is so good, and it gets better every day.

A bridge is a meeting place . . . a possibility, a metaphor.

It's great to be great, but it's great to be human.

If perfection is stagnation, then Heaven is a swamp.