Your home is that thing to which you can dedicate your energies with such singular devotion that the ultimate results become inconsequential.

But, ancient Greece and ancient Rome - people did not happen to believe that creativity came from human beings back then, OK? People believed that creativity was this divine attendant spirit that came to human beings from some distant and unknowable source, for distant and unknowable reasons.

As a writer, you always read in two minds: You read as a reader and you enjoy it, and you look at it as a writer, and you just admire the architecture and the construction.

You can butcher the sheep only once. But if you are careful, you can shear the sheep every year.

I am burdened with what the Buddhists call the monkey mind. The thoughts that swing from limb to limb, stopping only to scratch themselves, spit and howl. My mind swings wildly through time, touching on dozens of ideas a minute, unharnessed and undisciplined. You are, after all, what you think. Your emotions are the slaves to your thoughts, and you are the slave to your emotions.

I cannot overstate the power of libraries in my life.

There’s a crack (or cracks) in everyone…that’s how the light of God gets in.