You could reason with someone who was halfway educated and appeal to his intelligence, but I felt helpless in the face of utter stupidity.

I've had aunts and uncles who not only haven't read my books but could hardly believe that I was a writer.

I had my bully, and it was excruciating. Not only the bully, but the intimidation I felt.

It's amazing that the heart makes no noise when it cracks.

Everybody sins, Francis. The terrible thing is that we love our sins. We love the thing that makes us evil.

And he did see--that life was rotten, that there were no heroes, really, and that you couldn't trust anybody, not even yourself.

Why did the wise guys always accuse other people of being wise guys?

They don't actually want you to do your own thing, not unless it's their thing too.

I have lived a thousand lives lost within the pages of a book.

The possibility that hope comes out of hopelessness and that the opposite of things carry the seeds of birth - love out of hate, good out of evil. Didn't flowers grow out of dirt?

Affection is one of the most neglected words in the English language, that people throw the word love around like confetti when they mean affection.

If a believer demands that I, as a nonbeliever, observe his taboos in the public domain, he is not asking for my respect, but for my submission.

I hate jealousy, I hate possessiveness. I'm nobody's possession.

History is too slow for our life, for our hearts.

I consider Christian theology to be one of the great disasters of the human race.

Having been Scully for such a long time, I have to prove myself in other roles.

For the earliest period of the history of Israel, all that precedes the building of the temple, not a trace can be found of any sanctuary of exclusive legitimacy.

And suddenly everything, absolutely everything, was there.

I think you need to close your mouth cuz you aint gun tie me down.

I watch mostly independent films.

Even the least work done for others awakens the power within; even thinking the least good of others gradually instills into the heart the strength of a lion.