If I'm at somebody's house and they have magazines on the table and people are chatting, I feel almost a physical urge to start reading the magazines instead of talking to people.

Perhaps this is how you know you're doing the thing you're intended to: No matter how slow or how slight your progress, you never feel that it's a waste of time.

Probably I, like a lot of people, became a writer in imitation of or in homage to the books I enjoyed. When you're so captivated by something, you think, could I do that? Hmm, let me try

We all make mistakes, don't we? But if you can't forgive yourself, you'll always be an exile in your own life.

People who think my books are autobiographical, which they're not, credit me with having a much better memory than I do. I do, however, have a powerful imagination

I don't really have special rituals, but I don't try to write fiction unless I have a minimum of a few hours. For me, it takes a while to settle into a mode where I'm truly concentrating

We have to make mistakes, its how we learn compassion for others

I always worried someone would notice me, and then when no one did, I felt lonely.

Obviously the bar is much higher now for a behavior to be scandalous. Social media has really changed the way people live. It's not a new impulse; it's just being enacted in a new way.

I don't think it's shameful to admit that some days your time can be better spent reading than writing.

I have this theory that the likeability question comes up so much more with female characters created by female authors than it does with male characters and male authors

It's the climbing that makes the man. Getting to the top is an extra reward.

Fairness is not about statistical equality.

We have had plenty of atheist presidents; they just wouldn't admit it.

People don't trust the federal government as it relates to health care.

Dear brothers and sisters, after the great Pope John Paul II, the cardinals have elected me - a simple, humble worker in the vineyard of the Lord.

It's not a very big one, but at least it's dead and it took an awful lot of killing!

When I was 22, I thought I couldn't wear heels because of my height.

And as it is the most generous souls who have most gratitude, it is those who have most pride, and who are most base and infirm, who most allow themselves to be carried away by anger and hatred.

My mother taught me to walk proud and tall 'as if the world was mine.'

There are no short cuts to Heaven, only the ordinary way of ordinary things.