Outrage is easy, cheap, and oversold. The nation needs less anger and more thoughtful reflection, less shouting and more listening, less dissembling and more honesty.

and her skin shone luminous and impossibly pale, as if it drank light from the moon.

I write fiction. It may have mystery, it may have horror, it may have fantasy, it may have love, but like life, it's all the same genre.

I know she is crying. Her tears fall on the wrong side, into the bottomless well inside her.

With all those prizes the most interesting thing is getting on to the shortlist, because that tells you who people see as your peers.

It is brave to be involved

I am the only high-ranking U.S. official to ever meet with Kim Jong-il, and we are the same height and both wear high heels.

I like America. I think it's pretty cool. I got into acting to avoid politics of any sort, and so I could remain in a fantasy world.

That inner voice has both gentleness and clarity. So to get to authenticity, you really keep going down to the bone, to the honesty, and the inevitability of something.

Meditation is the alchemy of transforming. The unconscious into the conscious. It gives you a tremendous power, Far greater than anger, greed and lust.

When you trust your readers, you're hoping they will see what you see. Not every book is for every person.