The best and easiest lesson for me was to learn that writing is mostly hard work.

Donkeys are the most misunderstood and abused animals around the world.

I think by writing about a place with great specificity, you manage to make it universal.

I worked probably fewer jobs than most people, or fewer real soul-killing jobs than other people. I've been a typist, a typesetter, a keyliner, cappuccino-maker. I think I've been pretty lucky.

My donkeys are Jack and Don Quixote. They're very smart, very cautious. Much of what people consider stubbornness in donkeys is actually cautiousness.

As a writer, I can live somewhat independently, occupying nooks and crannies and finding meaning there. I can even live in my mind a good portion of most days.

A mathematical proof is beautiful, but when you're finished, it's really only about one thing. A story can be about many things.

That's where I live, a junkyard in a neighborhood of junkyards. We have three tractors from the 1940s and '50s, several old pickup trucks, and a pile of scrap metal.

I have a second-degree black belt in Okinawan kobudo weapons training.

Time is never wasted coming to an old man bar.

I grew up with donkeys, as well as horses, but I'm more interested in donkeys.

To change your way of thinking is to enjoy fulfillment of divine destiny

A tree’s nature does not change because the wind blew off a few of its leaves.

Don’t limit yourself by what you’ve achieved. All your past achievements are only stepping stones for the greatness to come.

Whenever I would get too nosy as a child, my grandmother would say, "When you learn someone else's secret, your own secrets aren't safe. Dig up one, release them all.

A lot of times you tell yourself no with things, a lot of times you discourage yourself. I've told myself yes more than no, and with those yeses, I've been able to actually have a career.

Iran is the world's top sponsor of terrorism, and I am not going to stop until that problem is properly solved.

‎I am something that was. and I am something that not yet.

A man of many seasons and many rainbows - there are so many dimensions of celebration.

I have always believed that the decision to have an abortion generally should be between a woman, her doctor, her conscience, and her God.

The voice of parents is the voice of gods, for to their children they are heaven's lieutenants.