Literature sucks you into another psyche. So the creation of empathy necessarily influences how you'll behave to other people.

I'm never going to tell the reader what to believe; I'm going to examine these characters that believe different ways, and examine their motives.

Stop a minute, right where you are. Relax your shoulders, shake your head and spine like a dog shaking off cold water. Tell that imperious voice in your head to be still.

Some of us know how we came by our fortune and some of us don't; but we wear it all the same

Once the rains abated, my father's garden thrived in the heat like an unleashed temper.

the conspicuous consumption of limited resources has yet to be accepted widely as a spiritual error, or even bad manners

How pointless life could be, what a foolish business of inventing things to love, just so you could dread losing them.