I fall into books the way I fall into lust - wholly, hungrily.

To name the world in your own terms, to tell your own story, is an act of authority and power. When you write, you are saying, in effect, 'I have a voice. I have a story. This is what I have to say.'

Memory is an act of meaning-making. It collects the disparate pieces of our lives and distills them.

Of the five senses, smell is the one with the best memory.

The shortest distance between two points is always under construction.

Anybody or anything may stand between you and knowledge if you are unfit for it.

When it is dark enough you can see the stars.

I do not know any way so sure of making others happy as of being so oneself, to begin with.

The four sweetest words in the English language — 'You wore me down.'

As a church we must love Jesus, or else we have lost our reason for existence.

What follows is more about books than it is about me, but nonetheless it is my inward autobiography, for the words we take into ourselves help to shape us.

Good soldiers are defined by what they can endure, not by what they can inflict.

The appetizer is just an excuse for an extra meal. Let's see, I will start with the eighty buffalo wings.

No one has ever found an organism that is known not to have parents, or a parent. This is the strongest evidence on behalf of evolution.

Claude Wheeler opened his eyes before the sun was up and vigorously shook his younger brother, who lay in the other half of the same bed.