You got to learn to take what people are willing to give.

Time constricts and flattens, you know. It's not evenly weighted. Certain moments linger in the mind and others disappear.

So is it just human nature to believe that things happen for a reason - to find some shred of meaning even in the worst experiences?

It's human nature to want to think the best of others, but if you listen carefully, people will always tell you who they are.

And so it is that you learn how to pass, if you're lucky, to look like everyone else, even though you're broken inside.

I like the assumption that everyone is trying his best, and we should all just be kind to each other.

One of the wonderful things about being a writer is that you're constantly dredging up some arcane knowledge or long-forgotten experience, rediscovering old passions and interests.

I've come to think that's what heaven is- a place in the memory of others where our best selves live on.

I never want to feel constrained by writing a novel for a specific audience.

I have a lot of empathy for women who fit their writing into the crevices of their too-busy lives, as I once did.

People have to snatch at happiness when they can, in this world. It is always easier to lose than to find...

The feeling of freedom, driving into scenery as green and lush as a postcard of Ireland was close to bliss.

Of all the joyous motives of school life, the love of knowledge is the only abiding one; the only one which determines the scale, so to speak, upon which the person will hereafter live.

Nevada's one of the most conservative states in the Union, but you can do what you want in Vegas and nobody judges you.

There is no such thing as repetition. Only insistance.

This organization is created to prevent you from going to hell. It isn't created to take you to heaven.

Generally we obtain very surely and very speedily what we are not too anxious to obtain.

We are told not to privilege one story above another. All the stories must be told. Well, maybe that's true, maybe all stories are worth hearing, but not all stories are worth telling.

If you're afraid to live your life in a glass bubble, how can you do what we do in this industry?

Anyone can be falsely accused of a crime. Everyone accused of a crime deserves a fair trial.

Each book, intuitively sensed and, in the case of fiction, intuitively worked out, stands on what has gone before, and grows out of it.