The folks I read as a kid really set me up. I owe a huge debt to Ray Bradbury and Madeleine L'Engle.

The beginning of the end can feel a lot like the middle when you are living in it.

When you're a kid, it's hard to tell the innocuous secrets from the ones that will kill you if you keep them.

Fiction helps me to reconnect with the true, deep weirdness inherent in everyday reality, in our dealings with one another, in just being alive.

It was sad and fierce all at once, alive with a lonely purity.

My older sister has entire kingdoms inside of her, and some of them are only accessible at certain seasons, in certain kinds of weather.

I spent most of my 20s with these alligator wrestlers in the swamps of South Florida.

It is a special kind of homelessness to be evicted from your dreams.

Self-disciplin e is necessary, but so is playfulness, flexibility, joy. When you stop demanding perfection of yourself, your writing desk will become a spacious place.

There are certain prehistoric things that swim beyond extinction.

You small mortals don't realize the power of your stories.

Rebirth is neither born of blood nor flesh or human origin. But born of God.

You willed yourself to where you are today, so will yourself out of it.

There’s no such thing as fate. It’s just the word men give to decisions which have worked out badly.

Your determination, selflessness and courage have brought the freedom struggle towards its fulfilment.

If rhyme is a crime, my mic is my co-defendant.

I really think that people must understand that what you really think and feel and believe is what you're going to create in your world.

There is no doubt that each of us is born an individual. Why is it then that so many of us die carbon copies?

Why does anything ever happen? Some things happen and some don't.

I assume that if people get to know me, they'll like me. If they don't, it's not my problem.

The best spiritual instruction is when you wake up in the morning and say, 'I wonder what's going to happen today.' And then carry that kind of curiosity through your life.