“Since the world is ending, Peter quoted from behind us, why not let the children touch the paintings?”

“I dont want what were doing to just end up as notes for a novel.”

“And I want to say something to the schoolchildren of America who were watching the live coverage of the shuttle's takeoff. I know it is hard to understand, but sometimes painful things like this ha...”

“Since the world is ending,” Peter quoted from behind us, “why not let the children touch the paintings?”

“There were the usual exhortations to purity – think of the novel not as your opportunity to get rich or famous but to wrestle, in your own way, with the titans of the form – exhortations poets don’...”

“I don’t want what we’re doing to just end up as notes for a novel.”

“Im a dot in the grand scheme of things. I dont matter, not even to the other dots.”

“Music is a writer's heartbeat.”

“Gratitude is the gateway to a positive life.”

“Sometimes two people have to fall apart, to realize how much they need to fall back together.”

“Good literature is one key to peace. When we stop reading each other, when we stop paying attention to each other's words and stories, we too easily oppose one another.”

“There is only one motive for writing a novel: to be published and read. To me there is no distinction between the mystery novel and the novel, only between good books and bad books. A good book tak...”

“Above his head at street level, he saw an angled aileron of a scarlet Porsche, its jaunty fin more or less at the upper edge of his window frame. A pair of very soft, clean glistening black shoes a...”

“As we stood there, chest high in water, I felt like I was in the middle of my own romance novel.”

“I will tell you what I will do and what I will not do. I will not serve that in which I no longer believe, whether it calls itself my home, my fatherland, or my church: and I will try to express my...”