We are like flowers always reaching up towards some shred of light. I find this wondrous, nearly magical, certainly brave.

Things, very strange things, happen in folktales and there is never much attention given to the whys and wherefores.

But every age deserves its fashion and its forms, and no one can control what survives.

Why did people try to shush trouble away as if it were an unruly child?

Writing, for me, is always a dance between the critical part of my brain and the subconscious.

I guess I'm drawn to stories of people whose physicality puts them on the outside of things in order to explore the ways in which an identity is formed around these prevailing attitudes.

I never know where I'm headed when I'm working on a book.

I'm interested in endurance. People persist in the face of the most excruciating hardships.

As we change, the way in which we are perceived in terms of our relevance, our value, our beauty, and sexual potency changes.

We grow, we mature, some of us give birth, we age, we die.

The language of the novel differs from the just-the-facts language of the old tales. It's robust and earthy, sometimes even baroque.

No difference, good or bad. Thoughts like birds in mind. Some fly in. Some fly out. Some stay at water hole to drink. Beware of birds that linger.

Ordinary persons, he said, smiling, found no differences between men. The artist found them all.

High-speed rail would revolutionise interstate travel and would also be an economic game-changer for dozens of regional communities along its path.

It's a huge responsibility to have influence and to steward it in a way that leads to God-honoring leadership.

That's a traditional Samoan dance. I was lucky that I was able to fly my cousins, who are professional dancers, up from Hawaii and they were able to be in the movie with me. We had a great time.

The number of 'unneccessary' errors that have been committed on move 41 are legion.

I'm magically delicious.

A little understanding of "As you sow, so shall you reap" is important, because then you can't blame the condition you're in on anyone else.

I have said before, and I shall say again, that I write this book for love of your love.

Whether you are religious or nonreligious, may you find solace in the knowledge that the suffering is ours, but that those we love suffer no more.