I don't think there was a particular book that made me want to write. They all did. I always wanted to write.

I suspect the most we can hope for, and it's no small hope, is that we never give up, that we never stop giving ourselves permission to try to love and receive love.

Traits don't change, states of mind do.

I actually see myself in all my characters. In order to imagine what it feels like to be another person I have to use my own experiences and responses to the world.

The facts didn't matter. Their stories mattered, and each of their stories belonged to each of them alone.

Had they known at these moments to be quietly joyful? Most likely not. People mostly did not know enough when they were living life that they were living it.

You surely know that in the course of a long marriage it is not unusual for a husband or a wife to develop a crush on someone else.

I'm so interested in the fact that we really don't know anybody. We think we know the people close to us, but we don't, we really don't.

In a way, I'm very interested in writing about Maine, because I think Maine represents its own kind of history. It's the oldest state, and it's the whitest state.

People like to think the younger generation's job is to steer the world to hell. But it's never true, is it? They're hopeful and good - and that's how it should be.

Or maybe, he thought, returning to the boxes, it was part of being Catholic--you were made to feel guilty about everything

Entrepreneur starts with an exaggeration, converts to a dream and then ends it with a vision!

I didn't read the book. I burned it after the first sentence.

Teach hope to all, despair to none.

Your people smarts will prove ten times more valuable than all the book smarts you can't get.

The ones that work out really and ones that become something to the audience, those are the most important people.

No one can say I didn't pay my dues in life.

What's powerful about a love scene is not seeing the act. It's seeing the passion, the need, the desire, the caring, the fear.

Ocean rowing is very much what you make it. Rowing technique is pretty irrelevant on the ocean. It's the psychology that's important.

I have no doubt in mind that I justify the space I take up in the world.

In everything, no matter what it may be, uniformity is undesirable. Leaving something incomplete makes it interesting, and gives one the feeling that there is room for growth