We don't choose what's going to wake us up.

I try to remember that the job - as well as the plight, and the unexpected joy - of the artist is to embrace uncertainty, to be sharpened and honed by it.

It is in the thousands of days of trying, failing, sitting, thinking, resisting, dreaming, raveling, unraveling that we are at our most engaged, alert, and alive.

Writing has been my window-flung wide open to this magnificent, chaotic existence-my way of interpreting everything within my grasp.

Everything you need to know about life can be learned from a genuine and ongoing attempt to write

If I dismiss the ordinary—waiting for the special, the extreme, the extraordinary to happen - I may just miss my life.

I do whatever is necessary in order to maintain the equanimity we all need to withstand the disappointment and rejection that are the lot of every writer, no matter where we are in our careers.

The only graceful thing to do is recognize and embrace what is actually happening, rather than fight against it.

My desk is covered with talismans: pieces of rose quartz, wishing stones from a favorite beach.

How do we live the writer's life? There's only one simple answer: 'we write.'

If you are a writer or any kind of artist, if you change something as fundamental as where you live - the way you live - then I think you change the very instrument that is trying to make the art

I've always thought it nonsense to believe something true simply because it was written in a book long ago.

Although the sinner does not believe in Hell, he shall nevertheless go there if he has the misfortune to die in mortal sin.

Don't make your kids look hot and dirty and sexy when they're 5-years old! It's really not the place or the time. You're about 11 years early.

Some of these guys wear beards to make them look intimidating, but they don't look so tough when they have to deliver the ball. Their abilities and their attitudes don't back up their beards.

People who are hard, grasping and always ready to take advantage of their neighbors become very rich.

One of the Republicans' major products is dream making. People are dying to get into this country... not out of it.

Good books do not make people wiser or happier--only more conscious.

Let me tell you, the heart of my tax proposal: I will not raise taxes on the American people. I will not raise taxes on middle-income Americans.

The entrance to the Underworld is in Los Angeles.

You do have to do business with and to try to influence people you don't agree with, or find disagreeable, so it's important to stress that balance.