The functions of intellect are insufficient without courage, love, friendship, compassion and empathy.

Some lives, conducted with grace, are beautiful arcs bridging this world to eternity.

less real than such threats as a man with a gun, a woman with a knife, or a U.S. Senator with an idea.

Without trust, there can be no tranquil resting of the mind.

If I had to write a rough draft, all the way through and then go back and start over, I probably would just stop writing. I wouldn't find that interesting. I would feel that I had committed so many things to the paper that I couldn't easily undo because one thing leads to the next, the interconnectedness, the sequences would make it very hard to change something that simply didn't work.

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.

I love my editor, but that would be the definition of hell to me to live with someone and have them go page by page through my manuscript. That I want to avoid at all costs.