shame should be reserved for the things we choose to do, not the circumstances that life puts on us

Writing is a job, a talent, but it's also the place to go in your head. It is the imaginary friend you drink your tea with in the afternoon.

Part of it is living in Tennessee. I'm so out of the loop. And as a person, I'm out of the loop. I'm oblivious by nature.

Never be so focused on what you're looking for that you overlook the thing you actually find.

No matter how much we love a book, the experience of reading it isn't complete until we can give it to someone who will love it as much as we do

Only a few of us are going to be willing to break our own hearts by trading in the living beauty of imagination for the stark disappointment of words.

You are always someones favorite unfolding story

Just because things hadn't gone the way I had planned didn't necessarily mean they had gone wrong.

I can write for any magazine now, in any voice. I can do it in two hours, I could do it in my sleep, it's like writing a grocery list.

There can be something cruel about people who have had good fortune. They equate it with personal goodness.

Sometimes not having any idea where we’re going works out better than we could possibly have imagined.

Joy doubles your faith, strength triples your might, and love quadruples your power.

Almost all sadness comes from thinking about the past, and all worry from thinking about the future — present-mindedness is your only safe haven.

We have the ability to survive anything.

How to gain, how to keep, how to recover happiness is in fact for most men at all times the secret motive of all they do, and of all they are willing to endure.

The very essence of the creative is its novelty, and hence we have no standard by which to judge it.

I'm naturally thin, so I don't have to work too hard at it. I love food, but I also love to work out. I think it makes everything work better.

Talking of patriotism, what humbug it is; it is a word which always commemorates a robbery.

Since I tend to write chronologically, the middle is always the place where the process is most taxing.

Four things greater than all things are Women and horses and power and War.

Once one has rejected faith, it will become impossible for him to enter the gates of Heaven.