Get the big truth first. If you get the big truth, the small truths will accumulate around it.

You don't have to burn books to destroy a culture. Just get people to stop reading them.

Living at risk is jumping off the cliff and building your wings on the way down.

Jump, and you will find out how to unfold your wings as you fall.

Looking back over a lifetime, you see that love was the answer to everything.

Don't think. Thinking is the enemy of creativity. It's self-conscious, and anything self-conscious is lousy. You can't try to do things. You simply must do things.

Sometimes you just have to jump out the window and grow wings on the way down.

I know you've heard it a thousand times before. But it's true - hard work pays off. If you want to be good, you have to practice, practice, practice. If you don't love something, then don't do it.

Insanity is relative. It depends on who has who locked in what cage.

You must stay drunk on writing so reality cannot destroy you.

Write a short story every week. It's not possible to write 52 bad short stories in a row.

It's helpful to remember that God doesn't belong to Christians, Jews, Muslims or anyone. We belong to God, not the other way around.

You can’t stop loving someone if you had already fallen

Ever notice that phrenologists have funny-shaped heads?

It's obviously funny to be a meme, so I could be down with it in that regard, but it also belittles one's art.

Smiling back at her, it occurs to me that I've never met a mean librarian.

A myth is more powerful - and more lasting - than reality.

Life has a way of working out the way it's meant to.

I guess my life hasn’t always been happy, or easy, or exactly what I want. At a certain point, I just have to try not to think too much about certain things, or else they’ll break my heart.

I'm seventy-one now, so it's hard to imagine a dramatic change.

If you listen to the way I speak, I have a lot of rhythm, use a lot of accents. When I'm playing my instrument, that concept comes through very clearly.