You bring up your children to be self-reliant and independent and they double-cross you and become self-reliant and independent.

I've had aunts and uncles who not only haven't read my books but could hardly believe that I was a writer.

I had my bully, and it was excruciating. Not only the bully, but the intimidation I felt.

It's amazing that the heart makes no noise when it cracks.

Everybody sins, Francis. The terrible thing is that we love our sins. We love the thing that makes us evil.

And he did see--that life was rotten, that there were no heroes, really, and that you couldn't trust anybody, not even yourself.

Why did the wise guys always accuse other people of being wise guys?

They don't actually want you to do your own thing, not unless it's their thing too.

I have lived a thousand lives lost within the pages of a book.

The possibility that hope comes out of hopelessness and that the opposite of things carry the seeds of birth - love out of hate, good out of evil. Didn't flowers grow out of dirt?

Affection is one of the most neglected words in the English language, that people throw the word love around like confetti when they mean affection.

Freedom without structure is its own slavery.

When we started making 'Where You Live', I bought a bunch of Polaroid cameras in so that people could record the experience. Some of those pictures are in the CD sleeve.

I think I was around 15 when my Dad was 40 and thought, "Man he's old. There's no way I'll be skating at that age."

I always say to people, "If you share my dream, why don't we walk together?" And that's my only organizing tool.

I would rather be in minority and be right, than in the majority and wrong.

I believe that the most important condition for faith is sensitivity to beauty.

Milkmen seem so wholesome, and there's no way anybody can be that wholesome.

There are very few interviews I turn down, because I really dig talking to people and hanging out.

If I didn't have [a] wife, maybe I can say, 'Yeah, I'm disappointed I'm not maybe good looking.' ... I don't know about China, but in Russia, I still look good.

If you believe that what you’re doing will have positive results, it will— even if it’s not immediately obvious.