I have dictated stories from an airport after writing the story out in longhand on the plane that I got from phone interviews and then was applauded by editors for 'working magic.

Every life deserves a certain amount of dignity, no matter how poor or damaged the shell that carries it.

This is a place where grandmothers hold babies on their laps under the stars and whisper in their ears that the lights in the sky are holes in the floor of heaven.

It was a good moment, the kind you would like to press between the pages of a book, or hide in your sock drawer, so you could touch it again.

Don’t worry about what people think, because once it’s all over the people who love you will make you what they want you to be, and the people who don’t love you will, too.

I believe that if we are going to write about life and death, we should not do it from the cheap seats.

Momma kept a garden, which sounds romantic to people who have never held a hoe

This is home and home is not something you remember, it is something you see every day and every moment.

I made some friends for life, the way I usually make them. Any jackass can be pleasant company, but if people help you when you're at your worst, that's a friend.

You do not hate the time you waste; it evokes a much more passive emotion than that. You only wish you had it back, like a quarter in an unlucky slot machine.

It is easy to be liked when the world has no jagged edges, when life is electric blankets and peach ice cream. But to be beloved, a man needs a dragon.

You are what you write.

When we look at things differently, things look different.

Almost anything is easier to get into than to get out of.

I'm sorry I ever invented the Electoral College.

You create a fearful culture where you spend a lot of time looking at where you screwed up.

I had a crush Florence Henderson when I was younger, i would love to meet Marcia but I would prefer mom.

Age is a limit we impose on ourselves.

All of my misfortunes come from having thought too well of my fellows.

The question that a lot of people ask me all the time is how did you make it? The truth be told, it was nothing but the grace of God.

Pray often rather than very long at a time. It is hard to be very long in prayer, and not slacken in our affections.