The single biggest reason I got my stories taken in various literary magazines - and I want to stress this - is because I refused to give up. Period.

All readers come to fiction as willing accomplices to your lies. Such is the basic goodwill contract made the moment we pick up a work of fiction.

We need books...because we are all, in the private kingdoms of our hearts, desperate for the company of a wise, true friend.

Misery loves another idiot with a jukebox where his soul should be.

Nothing on Earth is so beautiful as the final haul on Halloween night.

At the end of night, before you close your eyes, be content with what you've done and be proud of who you are.

I have a hard time defending the production of candy, given that it is basically crack for children and makes them dependent in unwholesome ways.

The answer is that we don't choose our freaks, they choose us.

At about the age of ten, during a late summer visit to Sears to buy school clothes, I became aware of the concept of candy by the pound.

If you want to fight a cult, you've got to form a cult.

To look at the work of your peers, and learn how to explain with kindness and precision, the nature of their mistakes is, in fact, how you learn to diagnose your own work.

If you will stay close to nature, to its simplicity, to the small things hardly noticeable, those things can unexpectedly become great and immeasurable.

Taking responsibility for your circumstances. Take responsibility. Be strong enough to admit your wrongs, ask for forgiveness, and think of constructive solutions to solve your problems.

We have to believe that the thought we have is piecing together for us the thing we are thinking of and is actually carrying it closer and closer to us!

Investment is crucial. Because the truth is, you only get jobs and growth in the economy when people invest money, at their own risk, in setting up a business or expanding an existing business.

Partnership is the way. Dictatorial win-lose is so old-school.

It's hard for us to talk about how we disdain file-sharing when in fact it probably has been a great resource for us.

Anything to do with the South resonates with me, because I'm Southern.

There is no greater goal than to truly improve Mr and Ms Everyone's health, as an innovator that is where I want to spend my energy.

All the dangers in our world are like a blessed wake up call. They tell us to live life NOW... not tomorrow, not when the children grow up, not when we retire... but NOW.

Entia non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitatem