With kids, they force you to get out of bed. They force you to smile. They remind you of spontaneity.

People seem very comfortable having a kind of Cheesecake Factory-type of life.

Whenever I went to an historical moment that was sad or where something terrible happened, it was, for me, a learning moment, a teaching moment for those who survived.

I usually feel something before I know it.

If you're just mired in privilege, there's nothing to learn; learning appears to be over.

Bruce Lee, before he fought, he would try to visualize how the fight would go, because he was visualizing a victorious path out of the combat.

Because I write intuitively and image-by-image and moment-by-moment, my writing has to be powered by feelings and emotions.

I can't stay engaged for years with a book unless it has feelings. It can't be an idea for me - it has to be a felt thing.

Much of the visualizing is imaginative.

People were always hungry, bullied, afraid, paranoid - so I just thought I'd show that in the novel in a kind of suffocating way.

Magical realism as a declaration in the text is usually when someone can't speak and then they must be magically reinvigorated in some way.

His strength kept me moving forward, and it was also tearing me apart.

I wonder if I should believe what she says. But when you're not strong in yourself, anyone can tell you anything and you'll fall for it.

We just have to recognize life for what it is: a gift to be grateful for, not a property to cling to, hoard, or defend.

Every White House has had its intellectuals, but very few presidents have been intellectuals themselves - Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, Woodrow Wilson, the list more or less stops there.

Because life constantly poses challenges, living demands courage

Our sexual energy, when not properly mastered, is transformed into anger.

Provided that God be glorified, we must not care by whom.

I mean, movies are like your kids or your fingers and toes or something, it's pretty hard to pick favorites.

Intellectual capital is the main determining factor and the base for economic and social development to any country.

-You're simple, straightforward and honest, a little bit on the primitive side, I should think. To interest you a woman would have to... -To lay her cards out on the table.