The honest answer is more complex. On some level I was sent. Or inspired. Or called. But my calling, such as it was, wasn't a single booming invitation from above (really, is it ever?).

Food is a gift and should be treated reverentially--romanced and ritualized and seasoned with memory.

With age comes acumen. With experience comes insight.

Life is filled with small moments that seem prosaic until one has the distance to look back and see the chain of large moments they unleashed.

Lie. Put down on paper the most interesting lies you can imagine. . .and then make them plausible.

But it's funny how the memory works and how sometimes we just belive whatever we want.

He defined himself almost wholly in the negative: It was not who he was, it was who he was not.

And though some days it is very hard, I try not to live for the future. And I try not to dream of the past.

He recalls what that first German soldier said to his major: No God-not yours or mine-approves of what you're doing.

The reality is that most of North America knows next to nothing of the 20th centurys first genocide - the systematic slaughter of 1.5 million Armenians in the First World War.

We may talk a good game and write even better ones, but we never outgrow those small wounded things we were when we were five and six and seven.

our destinies are intertwinedlike the stems of ivy on an oak tree.

I am awake, I see the sun. I am going to give my gratitude to the sun and to everything and everyone because I am still alive. One more day to be myself.

Love, one way or the other, in whatever form, matters every moment in life.

You can't break up what was never together. But my heart didn't get that memo.

Our strategy in going after this army is very simple. First we are going to cut it off, and then we are going to kill it.

Most human beings today waste some 25 to 30 years of their lives before they break through the actual and conventional lies which surround them.

You have to like the present; if not your life becomes secondhand, if you think it was better before. Or that it will be better in the future.

But, all this while, I was giving myself very unnecessary alarm. Providence had mediated better things for me than I could possibly imagine for myself.

I alienated the automotive industry by saying that cars should be lightweight and compact.

I think you gotta have some humor [in your story]. People gotta have a moment to laugh and feel that it's not taken 100% serious. That's important.