I sold a book six years after I left an MFA program. In between, there was a lot of endurance of poverty and a lot of fighting off doubt. It's all a part of the process of being or becoming a writer.

People thought becoming an adult meant that all your acts had consequences; in fact it was just the opposite.

To my parents, writing seemed precarious and not the best idea.

I'm just kind of really interested in athletes as artists of a pretty serious variety and people who devote themselves to what they do in a really incredible way.

You don't have to even see the common man anymore if you don't want to! Only through the telescope on your yacht.

It was strange the way he loved her; a side long and almost casual love, as if loving her were simply a matter of course, too natural to mention.

It's very hard right now to be a pro sports fan. The economics of this stuff is abysmal.

... people loved to suffer, as long as the suffering made sense. Everybody suffered. The key was to choose the form of your suffering.

I play American football every Saturday, which I find calming.

Most writers, most books, you have no idea whether it was a dollar or a million dollars.

The novel has always been the form that incorporates other forms. For me, it has always been the ultimate medium.

Romance is good, you know

When you're young, you think it's going to be solved by love. But it never is. Being close-as close as you can get-to another person only makes it clear the impassable distance between you.

I think the worst sort of time travel is how the clock speeds up when I'm on my break.

My goal is the same as every year - to not hurt myself.

I have found a much greater appreciation of Buddhism because I couldn't take it for granted here in exile.

But if I can't be sorry, why, I might as well be glad!

Is a civilization worth the name, which requires, for its existence the very doubtful prop of a racial legislation and a lynch law?

Im always trying to find connections between things. That art is the juxtaposition of a lot of things that seem unrelated but add up to something recognizable.

Whatever is beautiful is beautiful by necessity

Jim Rohn has been my favorite speaker for many years. He has changed my life for the better and can change yours too.