If you knew what was going to happen, if you knew everything that was going to happen next—if you knew in advance the consequences of your own actions—you'd be doomed. You'd be ruined as God. You'd be a stone. You'd never eat or drink or laugh or get out of bed in the morning. You'd never love anyone, ever again. You'd never dare to.

Publishing a book is like stuffing a note into a bottle and hurling it into the sea. Some bottles drown, some come safe to land, where the notes are read and then possibly cherished, or else misinterpreted, or else understood all too well by those who hate the message. You never know who your readers might be.

...we must be a beacon of hope, because if you tell people there's nothing they can do, they will do worse than nothing.

The story as told in The Odyssey doesn't hold water. There are too many inconsistencies.

You need a certain amount of nerve to be a writer, an almost physical nerve, the kind you need to walk a log across a river.

Richard liked to say he picked things up for a song, which was odd, because he never sang. He never even whistled. He was not a musical person.

To live in prison is to live without mirrors. To live without mirrors is to live without the self.