Everybody comes from somewhere.

Every single pleasure I can imagine or have experienced is more delightful, more of a pleasure, if you take it in small sips, if you take your time. Reading is not an exception.

Fundamentalist s live life with an exclamation point. I prefer to live my life with a question mark.

Writing a poem is like having an affair, a one-night stand; a short story is a romance, a relationship; a novel is a marriage-one has to be cunning, devise compromises, and make sacrifices.

Words create conceptions and self-conceptions and ultimately nations. They can start and stop wars. They can would and heal. Choosing words carefully is a moral responsibility.

A conflict begins and ends in the hearts and minds of people, not in the hilltops.

All of my novels are democracies.

The only way to keep a dream, any dream at all, to keep a dream perfect and rosy and intact and unsullied is never to live it out.

The opposite of compromise is not integrity. The opposite of compromise is not idealism. The opposite of compromise is fanaticism and death.

I wrote The Same Sea not as a political allegory about Israelis and Palestinians. I wrote it about something much more gutsy and immediate. I wrote it as a piece of chamber music.

Now, Israel is a fulfillment, and as a fulfillment, it is flawed. The fact that it is flawed is not so much a testimony about the failures of Israel. No, it is a testimony about the nature of dreams.

To be a fool at the right time is also an art.

Our enemies are also seeking the abilities to sabotage our power grid, our financial institutions, our air traffic control systems.

I remember on 'JAG,' Joe Jackson punched Stephen Culp and shattered his nose.

There are two kinds of people, those who like to sleep next to the wall, and those who like to sleep next to the people who push them off the bed.

I appreciate that question because I, in the state of Texas, had heard a lot of discussion about a faith-based initiative eroding the important bridge between church and state.

There is only one good thing in life, and that is love. And how you misunderstand it! how you spoil it! You treat it as something solemn like a sacrament, or something to be bought, like a dress.

Love isn't material. It's energy... We experience it as kindness, giving, mercy, compassion, peace, joy, acceptance, non-judgment, joining and intimacy.

My mother said I must always be intolerant of ignorance but understanding of illiteracy.

As so often in life, things are not always what it seems.

Don't listen to other people's advice unless it is rooted in irrepressible enthusiasm (e.g., "Be afraid but do it anyway"), or about the importance of being a good colleague.