I think if I had been writing fiction, where the work is entirely dependent on the writer's creativity and the potential directions the narrative might take are infinite, I might have frozen

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.

Losing your job releases you from the contract of giving a piece of your life daily

Rien n'est plus parfait, plus acheve qu'un cadavre. Nothing is more perfect, more complete than a corpse.

Fear, true fear, is a savage frenzy. Of all the insanities of which we are capable, it is surely the cruelest. There is naught to equal its drive, and naught can survive its thrust.

God never did make a more calm, quiet, innocent recreation than angling.

The world was quickly forgetting us. And there was little news to report.

If commercialization is putting my art on a shirt so that a kid who can't afford a $30,000 painting can buy one, then I'm all for it.

In a true zero-defects approach, there are no unimportant items.

The good needs fear no law, It is his safety and the bad man's awe.

Women systematically underestimate their own abilities.

For 'tis the sport to have the engineerHoist with his own petard.