Writing has been my window-flung wide open to this magnificent, chaotic existence-my way of interpreting everything within my grasp.

I try to remember that the job - as well as the plight, and the unexpected joy - of the artist is to embrace uncertainty, to be sharpened and honed by it.

It is in the thousands of days of trying, failing, sitting, thinking, resisting, dreaming, raveling, unraveling that we are at our most engaged, alert, and alive.

Everything you need to know about life can be learned from a genuine and ongoing attempt to write

If I dismiss the ordinary—waiting for the special, the extreme, the extraordinary to happen - I may just miss my life.

I do whatever is necessary in order to maintain the equanimity we all need to withstand the disappointment and rejection that are the lot of every writer, no matter where we are in our careers.

The only graceful thing to do is recognize and embrace what is actually happening, rather than fight against it.

My desk is covered with talismans: pieces of rose quartz, wishing stones from a favorite beach.

How do we live the writer's life? There's only one simple answer: 'we write.'

If you are a writer or any kind of artist, if you change something as fundamental as where you live - the way you live - then I think you change the very instrument that is trying to make the art

Open your hearts. Deep inside ourselves, we are all one and the same.

Life's a wondrous journey, don't take it for granted.

There is more to life than working for money.

If you love something, know that it will leave on a day you are far from ready.

Hauntingly active as they share space with the living, the dead refuse to give up their undead residency.

I want to do my Blade Runner, which is like a future Berlin film, which is like a thriller, but it's much deeper characters, I think.

Where the good and the bad and the worst and the best have gone to their eternal rest.

Most American heroes of the Revolutionary period are by now two men, the actual man and the romantic image. Some are even three men - the actual man, the image, and the debunked remains.

The U.S. healthcare system is probably the most interesting large group of companies that are heading for major problems that we've seen in a long, long time.

A true friend to me is someone who will be there when the chips are down.

A country's competitiveness starts not on the factory floor or in the engineering lab. It starts in the classroom.