The life of faith is a struggle enough in a broken world without us complicating it for other believers.

You can't foster a relationship with someone who is always checking your performance to make sure it's adequate enough to merit his friendship.

The ones who win usually don't need the prize.

What you don’t know, you can’t tell. Or made to tell.

You always go by your gut. That's the best you can do. You go by what you feel, and you say yes or no based on what it inspires in you.

The Saudis would struggle in Europe because of that problem with those prayers five times a day.

I don't [even] know the number of books on Abraham Lincoln. Ten thousand, twelve thousand? I have seen various numbers. It seems like every generation is always trying to come to terms with Lincoln.

As long as I am mayor of this city the great industries are secure.

I spring train in the winter, around early December...

Mythology is about Good VS Evil, is it not? We can pretend runes and astrology and reading tea leaves...But to whom do we pray when we are terrified? Carl Sagan's essays?

Over a four-month period, I sat down and wrote every day. And then there was a novel, and all of a sudden, there were agents and offers.

I've been gratified to see over the twenty or so years of my writing life the West become less of a colony of the East; maybe new technologies and too much travel undermine the idea of provinciality.

In a world of noise, confusion and conflict it is necessary that there be places of silence, inner discipline and peace. In such places love can blossom.