I am basically the sort of person who has stage-fright teaching. I kind of creep into a classroom. I'm not an anecdote-teller, either, although I often wish I were.

Do what you want to do, and don't worry if it's a little odd or doesn't fit the market.

Why don't you like the foods I like?" he asks sometimes. "Why don't you like the foods I make?" I answer.

If you think of something, do it. Plenty of people often think, “I’d like to do this, or that.

Like a tropical storm, I, too, may one day become ‘better organized.

There seemed to be three choices: to give up trying to love anyone, to stop being selfish, or to learn to love a person while continuing to be selfish.

My stories are sometimes closer to poems or meditations, but often there is at least a little narrative in them.

Art is not in some far-off place.

Work hard and meticulously. When in trouble, look closely at a text that is a good example of what you're trying to do. And be patient.

I'm a fierce editor! I don't edit out things that I began by saying, usually. The editing is on the micro level - a comma here, a word there.

I do see an interest in writing for Twitter. While publishers still do love the novel and people do still like to sink into one, the very quick form is appealing because of the pace of life.

I had the most beautiful dream, and then I fell asleep in your arms and my dream turned lovelier still.

I do not think there is any question of photography being an art form!

A book and a movie are different animals. You need a cinematic perspective to be involved in the motion pictures. And this is something I lack.

I took my work seriously, but not as a craft. More as a life.

The specific story line that people have responded to the most has been the horror of bathing suit shopping.

If scientific analysis were conclusively to demonstrate certain claims in Buddhism to be false, then we must accept the findings of science and abandon those claims.

Barry Goldwater once said, "I'd rather be right than president." I can't tell you how much I disagree with that Barry Goldwater.

I love a tree more than a man.

An Englishman is never afraid of being laughed at. He just thinks the other fellow is a fool. But Americans still can't risk anybody laughing at them.

When you are in control of what the final product is, there is kind of no limitation to what you feel like you can do because you know that if you don't like it, you can just cut it out.