You can write a great book and be ignored. Literary history is full of classics that were under-appreciated in their own time.

Probably careful plotting reflects my personality. I am meticulous by nature. I can't imagine speed-writing anything that happens to pop into my head.

I love sports, as all Bostonians seem to. I love books and movies, as all writers seem to.

The interior of a teenager’s mind is an endless war between Stupid and Clever.

Predisposition is not predestination.

An emotion is a thought, yes, an idea, but it is also a sensation, an ache in your body. Desire, love, hate, fear, repulsion - you feel these things in your muscle and bones, not just in your mind.

no one worth knowing can be quite known, no one worth possessing can be quite possessed

You know, being confident isn't the same as being right.

We move through time like a man in a rowboat, looking back even as we move forward.

Good stories are driven by conflict, tension, and high stakes.

There are many more ways to be attractive than to be beautiful.

The crime which is done now is that war has made a tool and slave of science, and man's knowledge, painfully and laboriously compiled, is made the instrument of man's destruction.

Then Mr. Underwood's meaning became clear: Atticus had used every tool available to free men to save Tom Robinson, but in the secret courts of men's hearts Atticus had no case.

I remember having meetings with Republican senators who initially had been trying to engage [Obamacare] but saw that the politics of 'no' were growing inside the Republican Party.

The years have gone by quickly. Death sits in the seat next to me. We make a lovely couple.

At university, I used to write silly little sketches and monologues, but never fiction.

Whatever the human law may be, neither an individual nor a nation can commit the least act of injustice against the obscurest individual without having to pay the penalty for it.

A library takes the gift of reading one step further by offering personalized learning opportunities second to none, a powerful antidote to the isolation of the Web.

When I was a little kid, of course, I was brown all summer. That's because I was free as a bird- nothing to do but catch bugs all day.

Halfway measures are not enough.

I am one of the last of a small tribe of troubadours, who still believe that life is a beautiful and exciting journey with a purpose and grace which are well worth singing about.