When I am writing, even though it's hard and I do struggle often, I am happier than when I'm not writing. I feel alive. Whereas when I'm not writing, I feel like your common every-day neurotic.

What matters is not how well you can avoid trouble, but how you cope with trouble when it comes.

The tone of every book is slightly different; there's a music that each has that is distinct from all the others.

He knew that his wings could ignite at any moment, but the closer he came to touching the fire, the more he sensed that he was fulfilling his destiny. As he put it in his journal that night: If I mean to save my life, then I have to come within an inch of destroying it.

I've been very lucky in this second marriage. It's just luck. It's absolute luck. And I can only marvel at it. So many other things could have happened that didn't, so overall I feel blessed.

Changing your mind is probably one of the most beautiful things people can do. And I've changed my mind about a lot of things over the years.

The world is so unpredictable. Things happen suddenly, unexpectedly. We want to feel we are in control of our own existence. In some ways we are, in some ways we're not. We are ruled by the forces of chance and coincidence.