When things don't go well, it helps to think of yourself as a genius and the rest of the world as a bunch of idiots.

Maybe that's what we look for in the people we love, the spark of unhappiness we think we know how to extinguish.

Every minute we were together, I felt like I was wandering in the dark through a strange house, groping for a light switch. And then, whenever I found one and turned it on, the bulb was dead.

Sooner or later we all lose our loved ones. We all have to suffer, every last one of us.

I read 'The Great Gatsby' in high school and was hypnotized by the beauty of the sentences and moved by the story about the irrevocability of lost love.

Once you'd broken through that invisible barrier that separates one person from another, you were connected forever, whether you liked it or not.

It just took some people a little longer than others to realize how few words they needed to get by, how much of life they could negotiate in silence.

Apparently even the most awful tragedies, and the people they'd ruined, got a little stale after a while.

I don't really distinguish between sympathy and honesty when I'm writing. The two go together - I'm interested in inhabiting my characters, seeing the world through their eyes.

He made me think of all the books I hadn't read, and all the ones I'd read but hadn't fully understood.

My novels are certainly more exciting than my own life.

Let God create in you His masterpiece. He will make you truly different and joyfully weird.

War is an absolute failure of imagination, scientific and political.

I'm just a spirit trying to be human.

The commandment to avoid contention applies to those who are right as well as those who are wrong.

I approach every single thing I do as a fan. It's the only way I can do things. That way, I never let myself down.

If anyone is crazy enough to want to kill a president of the United States, he can do it. All he must be prepared to do is give his life for the president's.

She wants you to be a god," I told him. "I know." His face twisted with embarrassment, and in spite of itself my heart lightened. It was such a boyish response. And so human. Parents, everywhere.

The corruption of the best is the worst.

Attachments to older forms of worship may be comfortable, but they may contain elements of falsehood that make them unacceptable to God.

When history calls, history calls.