Well, my background is journalism. I don't have any creative-writing experience except for one class I took as a sophomore in college.

We are unusual and tragic and alive.

I met a lot of great people in Saudi Arabia and I'd like to see them again. And I'd love to spend more time in the desert and in the mountains. I felt really at home there.

Dignity is an affectation, cute but eccentric, like learning French or collecting scarves.

We must do extraordinary things. We have to. It would be absurd not to.

Books have a unique way of stopping time in a particular moment and saying: Let’s not forget this.

Better to be at the bottom of a ladder you want to climb than in the middle of some ladder you don’t, right?

Here I am Rock You Like a Hurricane.

Again the greatest use of a human was to be useful. Not to consume, not to watch, but to do something for someone else that improved their life, even for a few minutes.

But everyone disappears, no matter who loves them.

Pain comes at me and I take it, chew it for a few minutes, and spit it back out. It's just not my thing anymore.

Maybe if you had megaphones on your chest they'd listen to the words that came out of your lips

The gifts of God that are hidden within us are designed not only for our own needs but also forthe needs of others.

In my garden I spend my days, in my library I spend my nights. My interests are divided between my geraniums and my books. With the flower I am in the present; with the book I am in the past.

narcissists ... have the least sense of self of anybody on the planet.

The desire to be part of something greater and to occupy life more fully, is also a desire to touch and be touched by the living imagination that sustains each soul and all of life.

It is said that if one chooses to pray to a rock with enough devotion, even that rock will come alive.

The hero is not fed on sweets, Daily his own heart he eats; Chambers of the great are jails, And head-winds right for royal sails.

Dry leaves upon the wall, Which flap like rustling wings and seek escape, A single frosted cluster on the grape Still hangs--and that is all.

If God is so powerful, can he create a rock which he cannot lift?

My favorite time frame for holding a stock is forever.