I feel like writing a book there's always a version in your head that's an amazing version, but then you write the version that you can write.

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.

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

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.

Heretics are the only [bitter] remedy against the entropy of human thought.("Literature, Revolution, and Entropy")

It only takes a second to score a goal.

It's the constant and determined effort that breaks down all resistance and sweeps away all obstacles.

Always have your players go and pick-up the guy who draws the charge.

After 10 years of French torture - psychological torture - it's great to do an American movie.

You can’t go through life not listening to music.

All shall work together for good; everything is needful that He sends; nothing can be needful that He withholds.

In my experience, it’s much easier to act like a Christian than it is to react like one. Anyone can put on an act. But your reactions reveal what is really in your heart.

On a related subject, Signore Pazzi, I must confess to you: I'm giving serious thought to eating your wife.

I doubt Dereck Chisora can knock me out.