The language of the Catholic Church - the liturgy, the prayer, the gospels - was in many ways my first poetry.

Language is the writer's only tool - we really don't have anything else - but our language contains within it our entire experience of the world.

We are surrounded by story.

A good writer sells out everybody he knows, sooner or later.

Guilt is glorious when it's well earned.

Heightism is the last unchecked prejudice.

The writing itself is the thing that generates stories for me.

When I'm not writing, I can't make sense of out anything. I feel the need to make some sense and find some order, and writing fiction is the only way I've found that seems to begin to do that.

I'd like to be better at short, snappy answers.

Without explaining why, and, most of all, without naming other authors or books, I can only say my novels are influenced by love and death.

We are at the mercy of time, and for all the ways we are remembered, a sea of things will be lost. But how much is contained in what lingers!

You have to participate relentlessly in the manifestation of your own blessings.

Anyone who is dreaming of a beautiful future is living in a wonderful world.

Out of difficulties grow miracles.

Efforts depend on individuals, but results rely on mere conditions.

Anyone who believes that the eternal question of war and peace in Europe is no longer there risks being deeply mistaken.

In my 39 years on this earth, the Holy city of Makka had been the first time I had ever stood before the Creator of all and felt like a complete human being

With my Les Paul, I know I'm small. But I enjoy living anyway.

We live in our own world , A world that is too small For you to stoop and enter Even on hands and knees, The adult subterfuge.

With every episode of struggle, there is a learning opportunity.

One thing I'm interested in is what shapes us: the people? The place where we live? It's both of those and more. That's what I keep coming back to.