The urge to create a fictional narrative is a mysterious one, and when an idea comes, the writer's sense of what a story wants to be is only vaguely visible through the penumbra of inspiration.

Orphans are the only ones who get to choose their fathers, and they love them twice as much.

The next day, she was silent. For breakfast, she murdered an onion and served it raw.

. . . nobody every taught you loyalty . . .

I am a champion standing over the shadow of my former self.

Today, tomorrow," she said. "A day is nothing. A day is just a match you strike after the ten thousand matches before it have gone out.

Use your imagination only on the future, never on the present or the past.

A good story feels both surprising and inevitable, fresh and familiar.

[I]n communism, you'd threaten a dog into compliance, while in capitalism, obedience is obtained through bribes.

But people do things to survive, and then after they survive, they can't live with what they've done.

What good's a captive without her captor?

There's more beauty in truth, even if it is dreadful beauty.

Dig deep & pull the roots of confidence from the ground of your being, standing firm in the raging storm until sunlight blossoms inside you.

The natural cure for sterility is a natural diet along with a home toxin detox.

All of science is nothing more than the refinement of everyday thinking.

And real nobility (that of the heart) is based on scorn, courage, and profound indifference.

As you get older you feel you need to pay more attention to what is around you and relish it. I'm greedy for beauty.

History is, in its essence, exciting; to present it as dull is, to my mind, stark and unforgivable misrepresentation.

Fishing has been styled 'a contemplative man's recreation,' ... and science is only a more contemplative man's recreation.

The film was fair to his musical achievement and gave him every opportunity to explain himself.

I can't cook. I don't have the right brain for it, somehow. I can't walk into a room and tidy it up. I get distracted. I pick up one thing and I start looking at it. And my cooking is truly heinous.