Being alone can be good. It's easy to find peace alone. But sometimes, being alone is a king of death.

As long as I have laughter, I am not without hope

My life would be constrained by the horror and fierce rage that my appearance inspired, but I would know peace as well as fear, tenderness as well as brutality, and even love in a time of cruelty.

Pain can be endured and defeated only if it is embraced. Denied or feared, it grows.

In my books, I never portray violence as a reasonable solution to a problem. If the lead characters in the story are driven to it, it's at the extreme end of their experience.

Some days I'm lucky to squeeze out a page of copy that pleases me, but I get as many as six or seven pages on a very good day; the average is probably three pages.

Your mind always does worse things than people can show in a movie.