Those who try to obliterate the past are injuring the present.

Reread, rewrite, reread, rewrite. If it still doesn’t work, throw it away.

A problem with a piece of writing often clarifies itself if you go for a long walk.

Finish the day's writing when you still want to continue.

The human longing for story is so powerful, so primitive, that it seems like something not learned, but locked into our genes.

i wish i was away in Ingo far across the briny sea sailing over deepest waters where neither care nore worry trouble me

I enjoy research; in fact research is so engaging that it would be easy to go on for years, and never write the novel at all.

It is a violation which has obsessed the tyrants of the twentieth century. They do not want simply to kill their opponents, but to liquidate them, to deny that they have ever existed.

However, the difficulties and pleasures of the writing itself are similar for a novel with a historical setting and a novel with a contemporary setting, as far as I'm concerned.

However, I began to submit poems to British magazines, and some were accepted. It was a great moment to see my first poems published. It felt like entering a tradition.

Writing poetry makes you intensely conscious of how words sound, both aloud and inside the head of the reader. You learn the weight of words and how they sound to the ear.

Redemption in Christ Jesus is the grace rebirth.

The truth had been said but evil had been done.

The trouble with the world is that the stupid are cocksure and the intelligent are full of doubt.

We are a way of the universe knowing itself.

I'm a huge historical fiction and non-fiction fan.

You were Marlon Brando, I was Steve McQueen, you were K.Y. Jelly, I was Vaseline.

The record is about seeing death and growing from it, and in the end, being strong and being alive.

The question is what color will everything be at that moment when I come for you? What will the sky be saying?

There are a lot of people who don't contribute anything to consumption and production.

We are not at peace with others because we are not at peace with ourselves, and we are not at peace with ourselves because we are not at peace with God