Honorary degrees and lifetime achievement awards are very encouraging. I know that it might sound strange that a writer who has published many books still needs encouragement, but this is true.

Memory blurs, that's the point. If memory didn't blur you wouldn't have the fool's courage to do things again, again, again, that tear you apart.

Reading is the sole means by which we slip, involuntarily, often helplessly, into another's skin, another's voice, another's soul.

I never change, I simply become more myself.

How lovely this world is, really: one simply has to look.

Our enemy is by tradition our savior, in preventing us from superficiality.

Read widely, and without apology. Read what you want to read, not what someone tells you you should read.

Night comes to the desert all at once, as if someone turned off the light.

Keep a light, hopeful heart. But ­expect the worst.

See, people come into your life for a reason. They might not know it themselves, why. You might not know it. But there's a reason. There has to be

Be your own editor/critic. Sympathetic but merciless!

Everyone has a story. It is what defines us. Our stories continue to change as we evolve in-and-out of our own skin, changing and manipulating the world around us.

God will ignite all that was extinct in your life

Sometime it's really hardest things to keep yourself alone.

In life and in a boxing ring, the defeat is not declared when you fall down. It is declared only when you refuse to get up

Intelligence is a moral category.

And upon this act [Emancipation Proclamation]...I invoke...the gracious favor of Almighty God.

So many people say, "I'm a good person!" Like, why are you a good person? To be a good person you have to actively be good.

Even Eichmann was sickened when he toured the concentration camps.

Fiction, maybe art in general, is a tentative, uncertain enterprise; it's not science, it's an exploration, but you never find much in the way of answers.

I only allow that which is good into my life. No one can depress you. No one can make you anxious. No one can hurt your feelings. No one can make you anything.....other than what you allow!