I can write all the way through the morning, when my mind is clear, and there are no distractions.

How much sweeter life would be if it all happened in reverse, if, after decades of disappointments, you finally arrived at an age when you had conceded nothing, when everything was possible.

I first started writing fiction in college because I was attracted to beautiful sentences. I loved to read them. I wanted to write them.

Fear is ... a kind of unintentional storytelling that we are all born knowing how to do.

Just like all great stories, our fears focus our attention on a question that is as important in life as it is in literature: What will happen next?

But the past is long, and the future is short.

It requires a certain kind of bravery, I suppose, to choose the status quo. There's a certain boldness to inaction.

We were a different kind of Christian, the quiet, reasonable kind, a breed embarrassed by the mention of miracles.

To some degree we all live with uncertainty. We have no control over the future. Yet we carry on, we persevere, because, I guess, it's the way we're made.

My goal was just to tell the unlikely story in a way that would feel as convincing as possible.

I guess it never is what you worry over that comes to pass in the end. The real catastrophes are always different—unimagined, unprepared for, unknown.

When someone between twenty and forty says, apropos of a work of art, 'I know what I like, ' he is really saying 'I have no taste of my own but accept the taste of my cultural milieu.

True love was about letting go. A daily choice. Knowing the worst about a person and sacrificing for them anyway. Choosing to love.

This is the even-handed dealing of the world!" he said. "There is noth-ing on which it is so hard as poverty; and there is nothing it professes tocondemn with such severity as the pursuit of wealth!

I’ve learned that fear is simply an illusion based on past experiences that we project into the present and onto the future.

You have Extreme and Van Halen and the history that I have with other people I played with. There are some effects that will hopefully break that stereotype.

Everybody knows that I am one of the greatest fighters of all time and I would beat all those guys.

Racism is the most divisive force in our society, so until it is dealt with we cannot hope for much.

In your heart must well that sympathy which soothes away all pains from the hearts of others.

Don't allow your past or present condition to control you. It's just a process that you're going through to get you to the next level.

Without the little ideas, there are no big ideas.