What I regret most in my life are failures of kindness.

I tend to foster drama via bleakness. If I want the reader to feel sympathy for a character, I cleave the character in half, on his birthday. And then it starts raining. And he's made of sugar.

What I regret most in my life are failures of kindness. Those moments when another human being was there, in front of me, suffering, and I responded . . . sensibly. Reservedly. Mildly.

Do those things that incline you toward the big questions, and avoid the things that would reduce you and make you trivial.

Developing our sympathetic compassion is not only possible but the only reason for us to be here on earth.

According to me, your life is going to be a gradual process of becoming kinder and more loving. Hurry up. Speed it along. Start right now.

It's a big world, and I really like it.

Character is that sum total of moments we can't explain.

The generalizing writer is like the passionate drunk, stumbling into your house mumbling: I know I'm not being clear, exactly, but don't you kind of feel what I'm feeling?

Kindness, it turns out, is hard - it starts out all rainbows and puppy dogs, and expands to include . . . well, EVERYTHING.

I'm always aware of writing around things I can't do, and I've come to think that that's actually what 'style' is - an avoidance of your deficiencies.

May you find courage, faith and hope to live your dreams.

It's like all technology: either not powerful enough or too powerful. It will never do exactly what you want it to do.

Never trust to general impressions, my boy, but concentrate yourself upon details.

One of the greatest creations of the human mind is the art of reviewing books without having read them.

It would be great if everyone chanted Hare Krishna. Everybody would benefit by doing it.

True greatness is the most ready to recognize and most willing to obey those simple outward laws which have been sanctioned by the experience of mankind.

Music is religion for me. There'll be music in the hereafter, too.

The Clinton Administration has turned out to be a boon. I knew that he would be wonderful, I just knew it from the beginning. From Arkansas? Shoot.

Death is a woman, and for that reason she's courageous and just, and never makes distinctions between mortals; she'll crush the ignorant, the arrogant, and the wise alike under her icy foot.

Why, this hath not a finger's dignity.