You cannot be afraid, Read the book. Smile at it. It's a great book-the greatest book you've ever read.

When I was growing up, I wanted to be a house painter like my father, but I was always screwing up when I went to work with him. I had a talent for knocking over paint and painting myself into corners. I also realized fairly quickly that painting bored me.

Don’t make me happy. Please, don’t fill me up and let me think that something good can come of any of this. Look at my bruises. Look at this graze. Do you see the graze inside me? Do you see it growing before your very eyes, eroding me? I don’t want to hope for anything anymore.

I feel the fear, but I walk fast toward it.

It's not the place, I think. It's the people. We'd have all been the same anywhere else.

Failure has been my best friend as a writer. It tests you, to see if you have what it takes to see it through.

I think 'The Lord Of The Rings' is the mother of all cult books, because you can be in that cult and not even know you're in it.