My circumstances of unrelieved responsibility and permanent distraction necessitated the short story form.

there isn't enough of anything as long as we live. But at intervals a sweetness appears and, given a chance prevails.

Life and death matters, yes. And the question of how to behave in this world, how to go in the face of everything. Time is short and the water is rising.

That's all we have, finally, the words, and they had better be the right ones.

Write about what you know, and what do you know better than your own secrets?

And what did you want? To call myself beloved, to feel myself beloved on the earth.

I could hear my heart beating. I could hear everyone's heart. I could hear the human noise we sat there making, not one of us moving, not even when the room went dark.

It ought to make us feel ashamed when we talk like we know what we're talking about when we talk about love.

The places where water comes together with other water. Those places stand out in my mind like holy places.

Dreams, you know, are what you wake up from.

But I can hardly sit still. I keep fidgeting, crossing one leg and then the other. I feel like I could throw off sparks, or break a window--maybe rearrange all the furniture.

God help me, he thought. God help all us poor wretches who could create and find we must lose our hearts for it because we cannot afford to spend our time at it. (“Mad House”)

Just like the waves of the ocean, my heart is singing the song of endless, eternal, sadness, joy, and love.

I've been absolutely terrified every moment of my life—and I've never let it keep me from doing a single thing I wanted to do.

No tears in the writer, no tears in the reader. No surprise for the writer, no surprise for the reader.

Learning passes for wisdom among those who want both.

We have to be realistic about what we can achieve in Afghanistan. The notion that the United States can build a Western-style democracy there is a myth

Shakespeare is universal.

Were it not for Scientology, I would either be completely insane or dead by now.

How do I keep fit? I lay down a lot.