When people say they write for themselves, that's probably what they do. I will admit that I don't write for myself; I write to be read. I've got the reader in my mind all the time.

I've had aunts and uncles who not only haven't read my books but could hardly believe that I was a writer.

I had my bully, and it was excruciating. Not only the bully, but the intimidation I felt.

It's amazing that the heart makes no noise when it cracks.

Everybody sins, Francis. The terrible thing is that we love our sins. We love the thing that makes us evil.

And he did see--that life was rotten, that there were no heroes, really, and that you couldn't trust anybody, not even yourself.

Why did the wise guys always accuse other people of being wise guys?

They don't actually want you to do your own thing, not unless it's their thing too.

I have lived a thousand lives lost within the pages of a book.

The possibility that hope comes out of hopelessness and that the opposite of things carry the seeds of birth - love out of hate, good out of evil. Didn't flowers grow out of dirt?

Affection is one of the most neglected words in the English language, that people throw the word love around like confetti when they mean affection.

A boy trying out a man's language.

Then, as now, there would always be people who preferred the option of devoting their religious energies to sacred space over the more difficult duty of compassion.

What am I doing here, Reena? Why am I dancing to the tunes of that old hag?’‘You are saving your family.

I so desperately wanted to be Mr. Somebody. Instead, I was the little brother, included to a point.

After all, the true seeing is within.

A man's memory may almost become the art of continually varying and misrepresenting his past, according to his interest in the present.

Actions have consequences... first rule of life. And the second rule is this - you are the only one responsible for your own actions.

I am an inventor of music.

You are free to think thoughts of worry or joy, and whatever you choose will attract the same kind back to you. Worry attracts worry. Joy attracts joy.

Leaders don't make excuses. They create results