You go to the marketplace and there are seventeen consciousnesses moving in and out. Sometimes you want the same shirt that I want, and our thought bubbles collide a bit and that makes plot.

I tend to foster drama via bleakness. If I want the reader to feel sympathy for a character, I cleave the character in half, on his birthday. And then it starts raining. And he's made of sugar.

What I regret most in my life are failures of kindness.

What I regret most in my life are failures of kindness. Those moments when another human being was there, in front of me, suffering, and I responded . . . sensibly. Reservedly. Mildly.

Do those things that incline you toward the big questions, and avoid the things that would reduce you and make you trivial.

Developing our sympathetic compassion is not only possible but the only reason for us to be here on earth.

According to me, your life is going to be a gradual process of becoming kinder and more loving. Hurry up. Speed it along. Start right now.

It's a big world, and I really like it.

Character is that sum total of moments we can't explain.

The generalizing writer is like the passionate drunk, stumbling into your house mumbling: I know I'm not being clear, exactly, but don't you kind of feel what I'm feeling?

Kindness, it turns out, is hard - it starts out all rainbows and puppy dogs, and expands to include . . . well, EVERYTHING.

How I admired people who talked about their vices as though they were distant relatives they'd learn to put up with because they couldn't quite disown them.

Fortune draws her breath through cracks that make coarse the route on which we march to success

It is art that makes life, makes interest, makes importance... and I know of no substitute whatever for the force and beauty of its process.

By failing to prepare, you are preparing to fail.

If you are not their slaves, you are rebels.

I often think we do not take this business of photography in a sufficiently serious spirit. Issuing a photograph is like marriage: you can only undo the mischief with infinite woe.

Some American writers who have known each other for years have never met in the daytime or when both were sober.

It just goes to show, if you try to ruin someone's life, it only gets better. You just don't get to be a part of it.

I think everyone has their own secret Dawn Wall to complete one day, and maybe they can put this project in their own context.

Especially when I'm in the gym, I get really motivated by hip-hop.