The novelist works neither to correct nor to condone, not at all to comfort, but to make what's told alive.

A good snapshot stops a moment from running away.

The excursion is the same when you go looking for your sorrow as when you go looking for your joy.

My continuing passion is to part a curtain, that invisible veil of indifference that falls between us and that blinds us to each other's presence, each other's wonder, each other's human plight.

Southerners love a good tale. They are born reciters, great memory retainers, diary keepers, letter exchangers . . . great talkers.

Insight doesn't happen often on the click of the moment, like a lucky snapshot, but comes in its own time and more slowly and from nowhere but within.

No art ever came out of not risking your neck.

it doesn t matter if it takes a long time getting there; the point is to have a destination.

The events in our lives happen in a sequence in time, but in their significance to ourselves they find their own order the continuous thread of revelation.

We are the breakers of our own hearts

People are mostly layers of violence and tenderness wrapped like bulbs, and it is difficult to say what makes them onions or hyacinths.

He could tune her, bringing out her better instincts and filtering out her lesser ones.

My dad's from there, and I have relatives there, but I don't think I've been to Chicago since I was like 9.

And I thought my loss was not, certainly, the end of the world, but to lessen the enthusiasm of those young people who were signed up, I thought that was tragic.

The greatest treasures of your life are associated with the people you love and who love you in return.

Blessed the one who has kept the mastery of his eyelids and has not deceived himself with either mind or sense with regard to the skin of the flesh that after a little while oozes putrefaction.

The peace for which every soul strives and which is the true nature of God and the utmost goal of a man is but the outcome of harmony.

I am a big fan of music in terms of storytelling device.

I used to write stories and poetry, but for some reason I have it in my head that if I'm going to write, I have to write a script.

I think there might be some pressure released while I'm doing autobiographical work, but afterwards everything remains the same.

We are all bastards but God loves us anyway.