The true alchemists do not change lead into gold; they change the world into words.

Blue is therefore most suitable as the color of interior life.

Sports, politics, and religion are the three passions of the badly educated.

it is discouraging to leave the past behind only to see it coming toward you like the thunderstorm which drenched you yesterday.

It’s not the word made flesh we want in writing, in poetry and fiction, but the flesh made word

For me, the short story is not a character sketch, a mouse trap, an epiphany, a slice of suburban life. It is the flowering of a symbol center. It is a poem grafted onto sturdier stock.

I am unlikely to trust a sentence that comes easily.

I write because I hate. A lot. Hard.

The expression to write something down suggests a descent of thought to the fingers whose movements immediately falsify it.

The speeding reader guts a book the way the skillful clean fish. The gills are gone, the tail, the scales, the fins; then the fillet slides away swifly as though fed to a seal.

What else is soul but a listener?

So many men treat their wives badly, or indifferently, or with barely contained impatience. Josh doesn't mind-- no that's not right--he insists on openly showing his love and respect for me.

You do care, you feel as though you will bleed to death with the pain of it all.

Our job in life is not to be successful, but to be faithful.

I long to get back into theater.

I was overwhelmed with the kindness of people [in Afghanistan] and found that they had managed to retain their dignity, their pride, and their hospitality under unspeakably bleak conditions.

When a music teacher that I had at school was taken ill and we had a variety show and I had to fill in - that's when I realized I had a voice.

How about slipping out of those wet things and into a dry Martini?

Occasionally, I go off the rails. I once nearly killed somebody once - it wasn't funny. I am a lunatic. The pressure of work, the pressure - everyone has a stop valve, and I don't have one.

I'm kind of glad the web is sort of totally anarchic. That's fine with me.

God's glory is the created brightness that surrounds God’s revelation of himself.