But no one walks out of his family without reprisals: a family is too disciplined an army to offer compassion to its deserters.

I would always be a better hater of things and institutions than a lover of them.

My attraction to story is a ceaseless current that runs through the center of me. My inexhaustible ardor for reading seems connected to my hunger for storylines that show up in both books and in the great tumbling chaos of life.

Happiness is an accident of nature, a beautiful and flawless aberration.

He was one of those rare men who are capable of being fully in love only once in their lives.

I never read my reviews... not even the good ones. Barbra Streisand once told me, if just one person in the audience doesn't applaud, it bothers her. I'm the same way. I'd be devastated to read that someone didn't like my work.

Like everything else, love's not worth much without some action to back it up.