I don't really write beautifully naturally, unlike some people.

I tend to foster drama via bleakness. If I want the reader to feel sympathy for a character, I cleave the character in half, on his birthday. And then it starts raining. And he's made of sugar.

What I regret most in my life are failures of kindness.

What I regret most in my life are failures of kindness. Those moments when another human being was there, in front of me, suffering, and I responded . . . sensibly. Reservedly. Mildly.

Do those things that incline you toward the big questions, and avoid the things that would reduce you and make you trivial.

Developing our sympathetic compassion is not only possible but the only reason for us to be here on earth.

According to me, your life is going to be a gradual process of becoming kinder and more loving. Hurry up. Speed it along. Start right now.

It's a big world, and I really like it.

Character is that sum total of moments we can't explain.

The generalizing writer is like the passionate drunk, stumbling into your house mumbling: I know I'm not being clear, exactly, but don't you kind of feel what I'm feeling?

Kindness, it turns out, is hard - it starts out all rainbows and puppy dogs, and expands to include . . . well, EVERYTHING.

Time crumbles things everything grows old under the power of Time and is forgotten through the lapse of Time.

Hell was what you made it

...when a reporter is quoting Sid Blumenthal on president Bush, you know he's scraping the barrel.

Muddle is the extra unknown personality in any committee.

I had a moment of religious epiphanosity.

Joni Mitchell seems destined to remain in a state of permanent dissatisfaction - always knowing what she would like to do, always more depressed when it's done.

The easy, gentle, and sloping path . . . is not the path of true virtue. It demands a rough and thorny road.

Our youth and manhood are due to our country, but our declining years are due to ourselves.

You have to sow before you can reap. You have to give before you can get.

Today will never come again.