Self-disciplin e is necessary, but so is playfulness, flexibility, joy. When you stop demanding perfection of yourself, your writing desk will become a spacious place.

The beginning of the end can feel a lot like the middle when you are living in it.

When you're a kid, it's hard to tell the innocuous secrets from the ones that will kill you if you keep them.

Fiction helps me to reconnect with the true, deep weirdness inherent in everyday reality, in our dealings with one another, in just being alive.

It was sad and fierce all at once, alive with a lonely purity.

My older sister has entire kingdoms inside of her, and some of them are only accessible at certain seasons, in certain kinds of weather.

I spent most of my 20s with these alligator wrestlers in the swamps of South Florida.

It is a special kind of homelessness to be evicted from your dreams.

There are certain prehistoric things that swim beyond extinction.

You small mortals don't realize the power of your stories.

I came to hate the complainers, with their dry and crumbly lipsticks and their wrinkled rage and their stupid, flaccid, old-people sun hats with brims the breadth of Saturn's rings.

Happiness isn't complicated. It is a humble state of gratitude for simple pleasures, tender mercies, recognized blessings, and inherent beauty.

There are sermons in stones, but it depends on how good your aim is.

For better or worse, when you're running for mayor, there's a little bit of a spotlight on you.

I don't believe much in luck. I believe more in work, in convincing, in stubbornness and in capacity.

All men are equal — all men, that is to say, who possess umbrellas.

To be controlled in our economic pursuits means to be controlled in everything.

The end of secrecy would be the end of the novel - especially the English novel. The English novel requires social secrecy, personal secrecy.

She's wearing a tight red sweater and a red skirt and enough makeup to scare a hooker.

The highest form of worship is to find the least among you and treat them like Jesus.

Whether you understand they evolved over billions of years or believe that a God made them all one afternoon, please be kind to animals.