It's funny with fiction - once you cut something, it hasn't happened anymore.

I tend to foster drama via bleakness. If I want the reader to feel sympathy for a character, I cleave the character in half, on his birthday. And then it starts raining. And he's made of sugar.

What I regret most in my life are failures of kindness.

What I regret most in my life are failures of kindness. Those moments when another human being was there, in front of me, suffering, and I responded . . . sensibly. Reservedly. Mildly.

Do those things that incline you toward the big questions, and avoid the things that would reduce you and make you trivial.

Developing our sympathetic compassion is not only possible but the only reason for us to be here on earth.

According to me, your life is going to be a gradual process of becoming kinder and more loving. Hurry up. Speed it along. Start right now.

It's a big world, and I really like it.

Character is that sum total of moments we can't explain.

The generalizing writer is like the passionate drunk, stumbling into your house mumbling: I know I'm not being clear, exactly, but don't you kind of feel what I'm feeling?

Kindness, it turns out, is hard - it starts out all rainbows and puppy dogs, and expands to include . . . well, EVERYTHING.

You deepen the injury. It is sufficient already.

Everybody loves to hate a sinner

The world is my country. Science my religion.

The intelligent perusal of fine games cannot fail to make the reader a better player and a better judge of the play of others.

Art and life ought to be hurriedly remarried and brought to live together.

I guess emotion really isn't necessary for me to go out and perform well.

So I am happy to have fans, especially if it enables me to keep working. And I am really grateful when people respond to my work.

I like melodrama because it is situated just at the meeting point between life and theater.

Eddie is like one of those great relief pitchers in baseball who gets the strikeout at the right time. Belfour comes up with the great saves when you need them.

Looking at the Bible, it would seem that God is just a more highly evolved human.