We live in stories. What we are is stories. We do things because of what is called character, and our character is formed by the stories we learn to live in.

The specific danger is us; we are rampant; this earth is our only friend; we are destroying it increment by increment at a horrific rate. We must understand that we can't buy it back.

Writing is a funny business. You sit in your room and listen to voices and write everything down. What kind of a profession is that?

We continually use stories to hold up as mirrors to ourselves.

What I wanted was some dreamlike Frank Lloyd Wright bungalow where we could sit on the veranda forever and it would always be twilight in the temperate zones, in the most beautiful house.

Don't worry about meaning. If a story's any good, it can't help but have meaning. Let the PhDs tell you what your story means.

In a story, nothing is real until it is acted upon.

I had discovered a terrible vulnerability I myself which I think of not as cowardliness but as an ability to imagine too much.

They knew bullshit, and they knew about the ruling class; dying for a ruling class cause was almost always bullshit.

One of finest evocations of life in Western America in recent memory... Powerful and profoundly moving.

We must define a story which encourages us to make use of the place where we live without killing it, and we must understand that the living world cannot be replicated.

I’m not in this world to live up to your expectations and you’re not in this world to live up to mine.

Education is fundamentally religious. Consequently, there is no question about whether a morality will be imposed in that education, but rather which morality will be imposed.

Admiral Spartan thinks that the object must be exposed and penetrated with all possible speed.

Every man knows that slavery is a curse. Whoever denies this, his lips libel his heart.

I think there's too much mult-tasking going on. I think people need to quiet down and focus and be still more.

There is nothing more painful to me at this stage in my life than to walk down the street and hear footsteps... then look around and see somebody white and feel relieved.

Taste is the literary conscience of the soul.

Mr. Speaker, I agree with those who say that the Global War on Terrorism is actually a Global War of Ideas and that terrorism is one of the tactics used in that War.

Have the boldness to tell yourself the truth - every bit of it.

If America wants to make "made in America" a symbol of excellence and worth. They have to make everything of high quality, otherwise the best.