Who was it said that coincidence was just God’s way of remaining anonymous?

When you feel homesick,’ he said, ‘just look up. Because the moon is the same wherever you go.

Beauty is terror. Whatever we call beautiful, we quiver before it.

The books I loved in childhood - the first loves - I’ve read so often that I’ve internalized them in some really essential way: they are more inside me now than out.

The Little Friend is a long book. It's also completely different from my first novel: different landscape, different characters, different use of language and diction, different approach to story.

Sometimes you can do all the right things and not succeed. And that's a hard lesson of reality.

Taking on challenging projects is the way that one grows and extends one's range as a writer, one's technical command, so I consider the time well-spent

It is is better to know one book intimately than a hundred superficially.

I believe, in a funny way, the job of the novelist is to be out there on the fringes and speaking for an experience that has not really been spoken for.

Does such a thing as "the fatal flaw," that showy dark crack running down the middle of a life, exist outside literature?

Criticism at the wrong time, even if it's legitimate criticism, can be seriously damaging and make the writer lose faith in what he's doing. It's the timing that's all-important.

Leadership. Something you need few words for, acts are enough.

The only way to know the honesty of any person is to love them without desire.

When we go to our meeting with God we should go like a patient to his doctor first to be thoroughly examined and afterwards to be treated for our ailment. Then something will happen when you pray.

My expectations-which I extended whenever I came close to accomplishing my goals-made it impossible ever to feel satisfied with my success.

There are two ways of exerting one's strength: one is pushing down, the other is pulling up.

I love coaching. I would probably be coaching. I would work in athletes and work with the youth. I would maybe do personal development and athletics. I would coach in high school or college.

Comedy is much harder, it's a lot more exacting. You can't just be real and you can't just use the same kind of techniques you use to fill up a regular scene.

Photography to me is catching a moment which is passing, and which is true.

I'm open to comments. I'm open to objective points of view, because I've been very narrow and very subjective.

The British retreat is over and now the advance will begin.