Who knows how fast a second-guess can travel? Who has ever measured the exact speed of regret?

How much sweeter life would be if it all happened in reverse, if, after decades of disappointments, you finally arrived at an age when you had conceded nothing, when everything was possible.

I first started writing fiction in college because I was attracted to beautiful sentences. I loved to read them. I wanted to write them.

Fear is ... a kind of unintentional storytelling that we are all born knowing how to do.

Just like all great stories, our fears focus our attention on a question that is as important in life as it is in literature: What will happen next?

But the past is long, and the future is short.

It requires a certain kind of bravery, I suppose, to choose the status quo. There's a certain boldness to inaction.

We were a different kind of Christian, the quiet, reasonable kind, a breed embarrassed by the mention of miracles.

I can write all the way through the morning, when my mind is clear, and there are no distractions.

To some degree we all live with uncertainty. We have no control over the future. Yet we carry on, we persevere, because, I guess, it's the way we're made.

My goal was just to tell the unlikely story in a way that would feel as convincing as possible.

Well, I grew up in the '80s, which was a really massive time for sci-fi.

The important man is not the artist, but the businessman who, in the marketplace and on the battlefield, holds the reins in his hands.

Remember, I'm not running against Rick Perry; I'm running against apathy.

Basically, when I'm writing something, I think about what is the subject of the piece. The subject of the piece is our fear of getting old, which is a variation on our fear of dying.

It's not who's put up the fastest time in the world that year, or who's put up the fastest time in the previous four years, but who can get their hand on the wall first today.

You need to keep on doing things you have never done before in your career. You have to have a go.

In great teams, conflict becomes productive. The free flow of conflicting ideas is critical for creative thinking, for discovering new solutions no one individual would have come to on his own.

We happily give up our freedom and our income in exchange for having someone else take responsibility for telling us what to do next.

I write in the mornings. During my down time.

I think half of what a trainer does is make you feel shame if you dont show up.