People fascinate the hell out of me. I never get tired of watching people, listening to people. The best part is not getting up in front of people but meeting people.

I think the deeper you go into questions, the deeper or more interesting the questions get. And I think that's the job of art.

One of the things I learned about writing a memoir is you can’t drag the reader through everything. Every human life is worth 20 memoirs.

I see a lot of marriages crash and burn around me and my wife. I've always been curious about how hard it is to love well and be loved.

Fear is a ghost; embrace your fear, and all you’ll see in your arms is yourself.

As a matter of writing philosophy, if there is one, I try not to ever plot a story. I try to write it from the character's point of view and see where it goes.

I've learned over the years that the writing is smarter and far larger than the writer and his or her own desires for it.

I have always known that writing fiction had little effect on the world; that if it did, young men would not have gone to war after The Iliad.

Somewhere, sometime I'd stopped expecting my father to father.

I read poetry every day. I love the boiled down essence of poetry. I look for poetry in prose. In a way that evocative.

What is art if not a concentrated and impassioned effort to make something with the little we have, the little we see?

Inside skull vast as outside skull

People say baseball players should go out and have fun. No way. To me, baseball is pressure, I always feel it. This is work. The fun is afterwards, when you shake hands.

I learned that a real friendship is not about what you can get, but what you can give. Real friendship is about making sacrifices and investing in people to help them improve their lives.

What's best about those seaside towns is that they are like time warps, and that's why people go there.

The quest for God is the quest for true happiness.

What remains unchanged is the principle, which is that we do not launch wars without overwelming reasons, and overwhelming alliances, and without overwhelming force.

Maybe I have just a younger voice than many other directors.

I am interested in the movement of my own thoughts and in trying make the poems feel more accurate to experience, including the experience of thinking.

Love is an unconditional commitment to an imperfect person.

There is nothing but roguery to be found in villainous men.