...they'd just tell you to turn the other cheek, wouldn't they?...Trouble is, Mrs. Dowdel observed, after you've turned the other cheek four times, you run out of cheeks.

The only way you can write is by the light of the bridges burning behind you.

I read because one life isn't enough and in the pages of a book, I can be anybody.

Only the nonreader fears books.

We write by the light of every story we have ever read.

Anyone who thinks small towns are friendlier than big cities lives in a big city.

We don't write what we know. We write what we wonder about.

If you cannot find yourself on the page very early in life, you will go looking for yourself in all the wrong places.

Because nobody but a reader ever became a writer.

This is how you hold onto your family. You hold them with open hands so they are free to find futures of their own. It's just that simple.

When I read a good book, it's like traveling the world without ever leaving my chair.

To explain all nature is too difficult a task for any one man or even for any one age

Our destinies are our own, if we have the courage to take control of them.

Raising the debt ceiling is not additional spending. It is simply saying, you, the United States of America, can continue to borrow the money you need to pay the bills you have already rung up.

Some actors can draw from their own darkness.

The Patriot Act makes a mockery of the Sixth Amendment, which protects your right to a speedy and public trial, and your right to the assistance of counsel for your defense.

The mastermind, the man with the plan

My first job is to write the characters as full and authentic people as well as I can.

90% of the work in this country is done by people who don't feel good".

I'm a child who was abused. I know the difference. I clearly know the difference. The whipping for correction and then their child abuse.