His adolescents are displaced aristocrats who have lost their kingdom and wealth, which was childhood. [On J.D. Salinger]

It never occurs to you when you are very young to need something other than what your parents have to offer you.

Love is a big and wonderful idea, but life is made up of small things. As a kid, you have nothing to do with the way the world is run; you just have to hurry to catch up with it.

Adolescents are attracted to tragic heroes. That's why rock stars dress like homeless people. Adolescence is a fall. It's when every child becomes an orphan.

A lot of children grow up in poverty with flawed parents, but their inner world is still as inherently filled with wonder and innocence as children who are kept away from the city's underbelly.

I had a ludicrous childhood, but I feel that I was able to profit from a lot of the idiotic and unfortunate things that happened to me by turning them into fiction.

You see only the beautiful things when you stand still. You only see things that you don't ordinarily notice. The birds are the prettiest things, I imagine.

In the temporary illumination of the headlights, the insects were scribbling out messages from God that we couldn't get.

Adolescents are still children in that they can't yet tell the difference between make believe and fiction.

The stars are always up in the sky...then when it is perfectly black, they feel less vulnerable and out they come.

Somewhere, a sparrow is singing in B minor.

Men of power have not time to read, yet men who do not read are not fit for power.

Gratitude opens the door to faith and faith opens the door to our relationship with God.

Acceptance is not submission it is acknowledgement of the facts of a situation. Then deciding what you're going to do about it.

too often, the only escape is sleep

All politicians promise that which they cannot deliver. I just wish they did so less gleefully.

What is desperately needed... is the skepticism and the sense of history that a liberal arts education provides.

The stars in the sky are really other suns like our own, around which orbit other planets. (paraphrase)

This game's stupid," said Lief. "Who the heck is Zelda, anyway?

In the absence of clearly-defined goals, we become strangely loyal to performing daily trivia until ultimately we become enslaved by it.

Spielberg was very young and starting up when we did Sugarland Express and I loved that, but the main thing was that I really loved his talent.