not every boy thrown to the wolves becomes a hero.

Those rituals of getting ready to write produce a kind of trance state.

The Bible is not man's word about God, but God's word about man.

My dear fellow,' Burlingame said, 'we sit here on a blind rock careening through space; we are all of us rushing headlong to the grave. Think you the worms will care, when anon they make a meal of you, whether you spent your moment sighing wigless in your chamber, or sacked the golden towns of Montezuma? Lookee, the day's nigh spent; 'tis gone careening into time forever. Not a tale's length past we lined our bowels with dinner, and already they growl for more. We are dying men, Ebenezer: i'faith, there's time for naught but bold resolves!

Nobody knew how to be what they were right.

I admire writers who can make complicated things simple, but my own talent has been to make simple things complicated.

Every artist joins a conversation that's been going on for generations, even millennia, before he or she joins the scene.