Working as an editor was like being a professional reader, and the better I became at reading the better I became at writing.

How much sweeter life would be if it all happened in reverse, if, after decades of disappointments, you finally arrived at an age when you had conceded nothing, when everything was possible.

I first started writing fiction in college because I was attracted to beautiful sentences. I loved to read them. I wanted to write them.

Fear is ... a kind of unintentional storytelling that we are all born knowing how to do.

Just like all great stories, our fears focus our attention on a question that is as important in life as it is in literature: What will happen next?

But the past is long, and the future is short.

It requires a certain kind of bravery, I suppose, to choose the status quo. There's a certain boldness to inaction.

We were a different kind of Christian, the quiet, reasonable kind, a breed embarrassed by the mention of miracles.

I can write all the way through the morning, when my mind is clear, and there are no distractions.

To some degree we all live with uncertainty. We have no control over the future. Yet we carry on, we persevere, because, I guess, it's the way we're made.

My goal was just to tell the unlikely story in a way that would feel as convincing as possible.

A Christian telling an atheist they're going to hell is as scary as a child telling an adult they're not getting any presents from Santa.

I want to be a ripple in the infinite ocean of love.

Unicorns aren't magical and beautiful. They're just predatory horses that have horns and love to eat virgins.

It's not all about mountaintops. Mostly it's about training so that you'll know the mountaintop for what it is when you get there.

We are only beginning to learn what to say in a photograph. The world we live in is a succession of fleeting moments, any one of which might say something significant.

If it wasn't for hustlers, gangsters & gamblers there'd be no Jazz. Wasn't middle~class who said Let's go hear Bird tonight.

I let it ring. I wanted to breathe for a few minutes, and I could think of nothing that couldn't wait. Besides, I had paid almost $50 for an answering machine. Let it earn its keep.

I try to make women feel more powerful without losing their femininity.

Using every means possible to show that, although you're just an ordinary human being, you're far above other mortals.

The aim should be to work on the method of management.