Whenever I pick up a book I think, "Tell me something I don't know."

Clearly the secret of happiness...is a variation on the general principle of banging your head against a wall, and then stopping.

I despise this weakness in myself - this endless one-sided conversation that takes the place of action.

...it just goes to show you can't leave anything behind. You bring it all with you, whether you want to or not.

I definitely do feel a pull toward people and places that are far from my own life.

Just because we think of wolves (or the wilderness, or another race) as wild and fierce, doesn't mean there isn't another side to them.

I don't think I could write about someone I didn't feel some sympathy for.

I don't use real people for inspiration.

If writers stuck to firsthand experience, novels would be pretty limited.

I suppose the short chapters and differing narrative points of view are quite "cinematic" devices, which came very naturally to me.

Initially I only decided to try and write a novel because I wasn't getting enough screenwriting work. It wasn't a long-held ambition, and certainly the idea came first.

Time and tide, he thought. The cycle of life. Ending in this, the last twilight. Before the silence of death. He perceived in this a micro-universe, complete.

If you can build a business up big enough, it's respectable.

It's just poetry, beauty and love. How hard can that be to act?

My mom would put me in these preppy little suits and slick my hair to the side. I have these baby pictures of me where I'm this little preppy kid with a sweater tied around my neck.

Don't be afraid to give your best to what seemingly are small jobs.

In the process of natural selection, then, any device that can insert a higher proportion of certain genes into subsequent generations will come to characterize the species.

In each atom, in each corpuscle, is life. Life is what you worship as God ... and earth is only an atom in the universe of worlds.

I have a point of view. You have a point of view. God has view.

There's a new sexy boy now!

My rule is, if it's not moving-monogram it!