If I had a plot that was all set in advance, why would I want go through the agony of writing the novel? A novel is a kind of exploration and discovery, for me at any rate.

I've begun to realize that you can listen to silence and learn from it. It has a quality and a dimension all its own.

Art is whether or not there is a scream in him wanting to get out in a special way.

Something that is yours forever is never precious

Come, let us have some tea and continue to talk about happy things.

Art begins . . . when someone interprets, when someone sees the world through his own eyes. Art happens when what is seen becomes mixed with the inside of the person who is seeing it.

Every man who has shown the world the way to beauty, to true culture, has been a rebel, a 'universal' without patriotism, without home, who has found his people everywhere.

I do not have many things that are meaningful to me. Except my doubts and my fears. And my art.

All beginnings are hard.

I don't work on my Sabbath. I write five-and-a-half or six days a week.

Two people who are true friends are like two bodies with one soul

I go to movies, go out with friends, go to car shows. I have a zoo.

My different personalities leave me in peace now.

Serve God with integrity, and if you achieve no success, at least no sin will lie upon your conscience.

We are moving into a new world and the old negativity will be left behind. Through the law of cause and effect, we can change the world, one person at a time.

I think there are problems with compact disc copy protection that can't be resolved.

I want young people to know that they can belong - whatever your culture, your religion, your sexuality - that you can live life how you want to live it and feel comfortable how you are.

Now what I contend is that my body is my own, at least I have always so regarded it. If I do harm through my experimenting with it, it is I who suffer, not the state.

The more irrational of us are worried about the millennium ending - as if a date would really matter.

I don't worry about how folks want to characterize me.

Conservatism as an "ism" is always going to be somewhat in tension with a political party.