“In our modern age, there are writers who have heaped scorn on the very idea of the primacy of story. I'd rather warm my hands on a sunlit ice floe than try to coax fire from the books they carve fr...”

“The writing of novels is one of the few ways I have found to approach the altar of God and Creation itself. You try to worship God by performing the singularly courageous and impossible favor of kn...”

“Here's what I love: when a great writer turns me into a Jew from Chicago, a lesbian out of South Carolina, or a black woman moving into a subway entrance in Harlem. Turn me into something else, wri...”

“Over the years, my church gave me passage into a menagerie of exotic words unknown in the South: "introit," "offertory," "liturgy," "movable feast," "the minor elevation," "the lavabo," "the appari...”

“A library could show you everything if you knew where to look.”

“The most powerful words in English are, "Tell me a story.”

“In a sense who you are has always been a story that you told to yourself. Now your self is a story that you tell to others.”

“Writing is not a hobby. It's the only way I get to shut up the demons in my head.”

“Seeing God is all about getting in touch with reality. If you want to photograph God, focus your lens on Hamakom, The Place, anyplace where you see divine light illuminating reality. Let your camer...”

“The habit of writing for my eye is good practice. It loosens the ligaments.”

“Not for a moment did he consider keeping a journal. He would never allow anyone to read his private thoughts; therefore, he did not risk writing them down. "I'd rather take it to my grave," he said...”

“She had her image and anything added to that would be mere verse-making. Something might come of it some day. In the meanwhile she had got her mood on to paperand this is the release that all write...”

“I know. I was there. I saw the great void in your soul, and you saw mine.”

“Habit rules the unreflecting herd.”

“Not everyone born free and equal, but everyone made equal. Each man the image of every other; then all are happy, for there are no mountains to make them cower, to judge themselves against. So! A b...”