I was a book editor for nine years. I'm familiar with the opposite experience, bracing myself for the likelihood that no one would want to publish my book.

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.

Islam might not be a challenge for our survival, but when it comes from the Saudis, it really is a concerning problem for the world peace and prosperity.

To be what we are, and to become what we are capable of becoming, is the only end of life.

We live in an unpredictable society where anything or anyone can go wrong”.

The best way to achieve surprise quality is by avoiding cliches.

I've always thought that it's good to watch the news to find out what everybody else is looking at and believing, if only because that's how consensus is constructed.

I think that people that are not sensitive, who seem to bang through life, do survive, but I don't think they get the really soaring feelings that people who are more artistically bent can get.

Don't keep searching for the truth, just let go of your opinions.

That Book (the BIBLE) accounts for the supremacy of England

Make friends. Be a leader. Kiss butts if you have to, but if the other guys despise you-you know what I mean?

People who move to New York always the same mistake. They can't see the place.