What interests me in writing a novel is taking really remote voices, characters, and stories and beginning to create some kind of web.

...we take comfort in the symmetries we find in life because they suggest a design where there is none.

Once upon a time there was a boy who loved a girl, and her laughter was a question he wanted to spend his whole life answering.

there are two types of people in the world: those who prefer to be sad among others, and those who prefer to be sad alone.

What about you? Are you happiest and saddest right now that you've ever been?" "Of course I am." "Why?" "Because nothing makes me happier and nothing makes me sadder than you.

She struggled with her sadness, but tried to conceal it, to divide it into smaller and smaller parts and scatter these in places she thought no one would find them.

To hike out alone in the desert; to sleep on the valley floor on a night with no moon, in the pitch black, just listening to the boom of silence: you can't imagine what that's like.

That's what I do. Watch movies and read. Sometimes I even pretend to write, but I'm not fooling anyone. Oh, and I go to the mailbox.

When will you learn that there isn't a word for everything?

I've reached the age where bruises are formed from failures within rather than accidents without.

So many words get lost. They leave the mouthand lose their courage, wandering aimlessly until they are swept into the gutter like dead leaves. On rainy days you can hear their chorus rushing past.

Ignite the fire in thy soul.

Learn, earn, return - these are the 3 phases of life. Jack Balousek There is no more noble occupation in the world than to assist another human being - to help someone to succeed.

The government's living in its own cloud cuckoo land and it's a cloud of greenhouse gases.

For me, it's important that I experience and feel what the characters are feeling. So I put myself in those moments, in their thoughts, and let it happen naturally. I write what I feel.

I've been told I'm too good looking for certain roles, but that's okay, it just motivates me to go deeper.

I don't think, I will ever actually climb to the top of the ladder, as I am always adding more rungs.

I was in Europe and it was at this stage that I fell in love with Americans in uniform. And I continue to have that love affair.

I had a few stocks, but stocks took a dive. I never sell my stocks.

I only write when listening to the music.

Perhaps every writer who thoroughly creates a fictional world will inevitably create a mirror of his own time and yet also create a world that no one else but him has ever visited.