Without stories, we are incomplete.

Fiction is the lie that tells the truth, after all.

Which has left me with a healthy respect and fondness for higher education that those of my friends and family who attended universities were cured of long ago.

No two readers can or will ever read the same book, because the reader builds the book in collaboration with the author.

It's oneiric, a beautiful, formless sequence of silver nitrate shadows, and when it ends I wonder what happened, and then I begin to rebuild it in my head

We have an obligation to make things beautiful, to not leave the world uglier than we found it.

Literature does not occur in a vacuum. It cannot be a monologue. It has to be a conversation, and new people, new readers, need to be brought into the conversation too.

You can no more read the same book again than you can step into the same river.

Books are really places, make no mistake about that.

...wanting soul life without the dark, warming intelligence of personal doubt is like expecting an egg without the brooding heat of the mother hen.

You cannot influence minds by making them feel comfortable. Influence should provoke the comfortable lifestyle into an uncomfortable situation where opportunities lie.

Women, you can have it all - a loving man, devoted husband, loving children, a fabulous career.

I trust that when people meet, we meet for a transcendent reason, and that the challenges we face in life are always lessons that serve our soul's growth.

Trust works both ways

Our failures can leave behind pavement or potholes. Our ability to receive grace determines which it will be.

No battle was ever won according to plan, but no battle was ever won without one.

Before you ridicule, remember somebody on a railway platform who seems to be train spotting may actually be writing poetry.

Philosophy is not a theory but an activity.

Sometimes we're so busy trying to get things and at the end of the day, all we need is love.