What a strange thing it is to recognize a sound like the shriek of a wounded animal, when you've never heard the shriek of a wounded animal.

Our salvation never comes in the form we would have chosen.

Sometimes, in that darkness, there is a single act of love, some selfless gesture, an aspiration, and we see that it's not been all waste, all hopeless, and we can ... well ... go on.

Uninvited criticism is insult.

A short story is a writer's way of thinking through experience... Journalism aims at accuracy, but fiction's aim is truth. The writer distorts reality in the interest of a larger truth.

Obscenities are too often used for shock value, as a kind of shorthand for real expression of emotion. You've got to scale down your monstrosities. A scream is not a discovery.

Let good people sin. Give virtue to rotters.

Nothing on earth in fiction is less interesting than characters under the influence of alcohol.

Plot does not simply move with time, but spreads out conceptually in metaphorical space.

Using language like jungle growth isn't the solution to telling a story.

There's something about a parenthesis in fiction that puts one off, saying, "It's me, moi, jumping in now."

Faith is where they learn about their God

Judging by the photograph it seemed like I hadn’t been there at all. As if it was my camera that had been on holiday, and not me.

We must use time as a tool not as a crutch.

He who serves his brother best gets nearer God than all the rest.

A coach should never be afraid to ask questions of anyone he could learn from.

The words that matter always stay.

If affirmative action means what I just described, what I'm for, then I'm for it.

Shun the incremental and go for the leap.

Success simple disciplines, practiced every day, while failure a few errors in judgment, repeated every day. Choose to succeed.

These are very serious times, and serious people need to be doing some serious thinking.