After two years of sending out query letters and failing to get an agent, I made friends with an author, who was nice enough to introduce me to his agent. That got my foot in the door.

When we are children we seldom think of the future. This innocence leaves us free to enjoy ourselves as few adults can. The day we fret about the future is the day we leave our childhood behind.

Words are pale shadows of forgotten names. As names have power, words have power. Words can light fires in the minds of men. Words can wring tears from the hardest hearts.

I have, of course, been called many other things. Most of them uncouth, although very few were unearned

The world is a mess and I just need to rule it.

Half of seeming clever is keeping your mouth shut at the right times.

It's like everyone tells a story about themselves inside their own head. Always. All the time. That story makes you what you are. We build ourselves out of that story.

It was wise enough to know itself, and brave enough to be itself, and wild enough to change itself while somehow staying altogether true.

If I seem to wander, if I seem to stray, remember that true stories seldom take the straightest way

There are three things all wise men fear: the sea in storm, a night with no moon, and the anger of a gentle man.

Do not mistake me for my mask. You see light dappling on the water and forget the deep, cold dark beneath.

If the retreat house was a trap, it was a very nice one.

A beautiful poem is nothing but a mirror of philosophy through which we can see life’s pure beauty.

We spend our lives in the attempt to capture memory forever

The intelligence community does not have complete 'eyes on' the totality of the Iranian nuclear program, nor can it guarantee that we have identified all of Iran's nuclear facilities and processes.

We give all we have, lives, property, safety, skill...we fight, we die, for a simple thing. Only that a man can stand up.

I look into his eyes, no longer afraid what's in them, but afriad I'll lose what they carry.

My mind is filled with cataclysm and apocalypse. I wish for earthquakes, eruptions, flood.

Fear God. Love your neighbor. And shoot ducks.

O abyss! O eternal Godhead! O deep sea! What more could you have given me than the gift of your very self?

I've learned that no matter what I do, people are going to have their opinions.