Pain can be endured and defeated only if it is embraced. Denied or feared, it grows in perception if not in reality. The best response to terror is righteous anger, confidence in ultimate justice, a refusal to be intimidated.

I'm no more a wonder than anyone. And that's what makes the world magical. Every baby's a seed of wonder - that gets watered or it doesn't.

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.

It is music that speaks to the deepest reaches of your soul, and you are lifted higher, ever higher, by the adagio, in my opinion more so even than in any of the masses that Beethoven composed.

Change isn't easy... changing the way you live means changing what you believe about life. That's hard... When we make our own misery, we sometimes cling to it even when we want so bad to change because the misery is something we know. The misery is comfortable.

Perseverance is impossible if we don't permit ourselves to hope.

We are not born to wait. We are born to do.