I guess real maturity, which most of us never achieve, is when you realize that you're not the center of the universe.

I woke up one morning and realized that what I wanted to say to everyone - children, young people, adults - was: Read for your life.

Death is very mysterious to us. One moment someone is there with us, and the next moment they're not.

Punch after punch after punch. February is a mean bully. Nothing could be worse - except August.

A friend of mine who writes history books said to me that he thought that the two creatures most to be pitied were the spider and the novelist - their lives hanging by a thread spun out of their own guts. But in some ways I think writers of fiction are the creatures most to be envied, because who else besides the spider is allowed to take that fragile thread and weave it into a pattern? What a gift of grace to be able to take the chaos from within and from it to create some semblance of order.

Nothing smelled so good or danced so well as a birch fire.

If we marvel at the artist who has written a great book, we must marvel more at those people whose lives are works of art and who don't even know it, who wouldn't believe it if they were told. However hard work good writing may be, it is easier than good living.