The triumph of writing fiction is that by doing so, writers can build a more ideal world in themselves.

As a person, I do ascribe to a lot of magical thinking myself.

In the end, fiction is the craft of telling truth through lies.

While writing, writers are living inside a character or characters, and when the book ekes into the world, writers are living inside the reader. That's more than connecting.

Amor animi arbitrio sumitu, non ponitur; we choose to love; we do not choose to cease loving.

Who, in the midst of passion, is vigilant against illness? Who listens to the reports of recently decimated populations in Spain, India, Bora Bora, when new lips, tongues and poems fill the world?

If there's a black cat that crosses the street in my path, I will turn around and walk 20 minutes out of my way to not cross it.

Depressing thought: my friends were the girls I ate lunch with, all buddies from kindergarten who knew one another so well we weren't sure if we even liked one another anymore.

Sometimes you have to let time carry you past your troubles.

I'm a private person, a shy person. Sometimes, reading for eleven hours straight feels to me like the perfect way to spend a day.

I love Twitter. It's like having a closet full of clever friends that you can visit twice a day, then shove back into the darkness when you're tired of them.

Destiny is purpose seen from the other end of life.

The ‘deep pause’ needed to cultivate wonder is far too often back-filled with an incessant busyness, as busyness errantly presumes a ‘deep pause’ to be deeply wasteful.

The fun of reading as "an exchange between consciousnesses, a way for human beings to talk to each other about stuff we can't normally talk about."

You were trying to tell me something and I was trying to tell you something else. We didn't trust each other and that was reason enough to make each of us right.

In the depths of the night, fear grips my heart. It paralyzes my mind. But most of all, I feel very, very alone

Our own death wish is our only real tragedy.

It's too easy to blame other people in football.

Nothing can relieve the pain. Not crying, laughing, screaming, begging. Nothing can change the past.

I'm an actor and I like having attention. There's a reason I like being on stage and in front of the camera, and it's that interaction.

If the church is to be faithful it must be formed andordered from the inside of its experience and confession and not by borrowing from sources extenal to its own life.