A successful novel should interrupt the reader’s life, make him or her miss appointments, skip meals, forget to walk the dog.

Quiet people have the loudest minds.

Monsters are real, and ghosts are real too. They live inside us, and sometimes, they win.

The water was glassy and calm, still candy-colored in the afterglow of sunset.

A life without love is like a tree without fruit.

The trust of the innocent is the liar's most useful tool.

Talent is cheaper than table salt. What separates the talented individual from the successful one is a lot of hard work.

Outside, daylight was bleeding slowly toward dusk.

You can't deny laughter; when it comes, it plops down in your favorite chair and stays as long as it wants.

People who try hard to do the right thing always seem mad.

The place where you made your stand never mattered. Only that you were there... and still on your feet.

It is the deepest of wrongs I am driven to write…. And losing you was one of them.

I believe integrity can be restored to a society one person at a time. The choice belongs to each of us.

Our nuclear weapons are meant purely as a deterrent against nuclear adventure by an adversary.

My private life became public.

Each of us has great gifts, but many of us severely limit ourselves with negative attitudes about our potential.

In the country of the blind, the one-eyed king can still goof up.

In part because they had no choice, right? If you were a slave, you did what the master said. And they said to worship: "You're going to worship with us."

I'm not affected by violence the way some people are. I don't know why, but I enjoy that intensity.

What does the Academy Award mean? I don’t think it means much of anything.

The natural movement of one's soul is upwards. But just as any object is dragged down when a heavy weight is tied to it, the burden of the body drags down the soul.