People nearly always believe, and are willing to back it up with weapons and cruelty, that their religion and way of life is better than the other person's

I decided to write short stories because they got rejected quicker.

Breakfast was only worth having when somebody else made it for you.

People think they own time. They have watches and clocks and digital pulses. But they are wrong. Time owns them.

I approach serious subjects, and I like to have the good guys win and have the parents among the good guys

If you write a story based on a real person, you're trapped by the details of the real person and his life. It gets in the way of writing your own story.

I love writing and do not know why it is considered such a difficult, agonizing profession.

My favorite book is always the one I'm working on at the moment

I wrote eight full-length adult novels in my twenties. None of them were published

Actually my first eight books were historical novels, but they were never published

in Los Angeles ... was the thinking-est crowd on earth: how to get ahead, how to mold a better body, how to have a better relationship, how to score, earn, fight, win, get published, be a star.

Rewriting the negative beliefs you have learned is the essence of becoming the director of your life.

I saw part of The Singing Detective on TV in New York. I said, Something is going on here.

Young men and women come of age when they look at their parents and see them not only as their parents but as people. They gain a lot of compassion, and it's easier to accept their flaws.

I don't bother to look for parking space anymore. As soon as I get near Hollywood Boulevard ... I sell.

To pray is to cast off your burdens, it is to tear away your rags, it is to shake off your diseases, it is to be filled with spiritual vigor, it is to reach the highest point of Christian health.

Diffused knowledge immortalizes itself.

He is the very Janus of poets; he wears almost everywhere two faces; and you have scarce begun to admire the one, ere you despise the other.

The first time I went out under the spotlight, I was proper freaked out.

The federal government may not disarm individual citizens without some unusually strong justification.