I identified in a very deep way with the individuals I was writing about because the theme that runs through this story is of extraordinary hardship and the will to overcome it.

This self-respect and sense of self-worth, the innermost armament of the soul, lies at the heart of humanness; to be deprived of it is to be dehumanized, to be cleaved from, and cast below, mankind.

People think I must have been turning cartwheels on the night I sealed the movie deal - which was only two days after sealing the book deal - but I was really quite terrified.

I think authors can get into trouble viewing the subject matter as their turf

It's easy to talk to a horse if you understand his language. Horses stay the same from the day they are born until the day they die. They are only changed by the way people treat them.

The paradox of vengefulness is that it makes men dependent upon those who have harmed them, believing that their release from pain will come only when their tormentors suffer.

For me, being a writer was never a choice. I was born one. All through my childhood I wrote short stories and stuffed them in drawers. I wrote on everything. I didn't do my homework so I could write

Without dignity, identity is erased. In its absence, men are defined not by themselves, but by their captors and the circumstances in which they are forced to live.

Without dignity, identity is erased.

I just thought I was empty and now I'm being filled...and I just wanted to keep being filled.

His books were the closest thing he had to furniture and he lived in them the way other men live in easy chairs.

The spiritual malady that we speak of so often in recovery circles requires a spiritual solution. Nothing else will ever be enough and nothing else will last.

Harry was a bright boy. And like many bright boys, he had a little mischief in him.

A prudent ruler is distinguished by his ability to manage.

Evaluate every performance on: stage presence, concentration, delivery, material and lessons learned.

I have never had an animal that didn't have a personality, one differing from another.

I think a nap or a rest overnight is great. But who needs three days of rest? Please! The second day, you might die.

Around your skin, I tie and untie mine.

Drawing is a kind of hypnotism: one looks in such a way at the model, that he comes and takes a seat on the paper.

Nature, which makes nothing durable, always repeats itself so that nothing which it makes may be lost.