When blame has been assigned, the story is over.

When you’re in love you don’t have to do a damn thing. You can just be. You can just stay quiet in the world. You don’t have to move an inch.

As my mother once said to me, ‘They’re quite crazy, dear – men are. What you look for is one of them whose insanity is large enough, and calm and generous enough, to include you.

Forget art. Put your trust in ice cream.

In truth, there are only two realities: the one for people who are in love or love each other, and the one for people who are standing outside all that.

Needing something is not the same thing as being interested in the thing itself.

You are a real find and you keep me satisfied, up to a point. After all, I'm a malcontent and you can't change that.

If you want to see the consequences of ideas, write a story. If you want to see the consequences of belief, write a story in which somebody is acting on the ideas or beliefs that she has.

Gainfully unemployed, very proud of it, too.

When I'm writing, I'm waiting to see somebody, and I'm waiting to hear them. It's almost like conjuring spirits out of the air, using your own imaginative instability.

A novel is not a summary of its plot but a collection of instances, of luminous specific details that take us in the direction of the unsaid and unseen.

I laugh because I must not cry, that is all, that is all.

Remember! If during the day a person didn’t do anything concerning his purpose and calling, he did nothing at all

A goal without real consequences is wishful thinking. Good follow-through doesn't depend on the right intentions. It depends on the right incentives.

You don't have to be the Dalai Lama to tell people that life's about change.

We have taken the latter course as a culture. So there is mass confusion today--even in the evangelical church--over whether the Bible is true and over how far we should go in obeying it.

In this country, you never pull the emergency brake, even when there is an emergency. It is imperative that the trains run on schedule.

Even as I approach the gambling hall, as soon as I hear, two rooms away, the jingle of money poured out on the table, I almost go into convulsions.

Religion is life essential.

The first and wisest of them all professed To know this only, that he nothing knew.

No matter what the Constitution says, it won't endure if the people don't closely read it and demand that it be followed.