Your unhappiness is a way of speaking to you, it's telling you something isn't right.

The whole concept of stage fright is fascinating. Actors get stage fright, but they wouldn't be on the stage in the first place if they just succumbed to it. There's this love/hate relationship with the spotlight.

Everybody knows what they were kind of drawn towards or what they're gifted at and it's more of courage and looking at yourself and saying, "I'm going to try something and move back in that direction." So it's less of an intellectual problem and it's more of an emotional problem because as you get into your 30's and 40's you get addicted to a paycheck and a comfort and you delude yourself into thinking this is what my life is and you lack the guts to be honest with yourself and to make that change.

I have sort of issues with my claustrophobia where being on an airplane or if I force myself, to put myself in these circumstances that I kind of, am afraid of, that can be a way to toughen me up.

Our times might emphasize equality, which we then mistake for the need for everyone to be the same, but what we really mean by this is the equal chance for people to express their differences, to let a thousand flowers bloom.

My greatest wish is that a certain way of looking at the world, a way I show in all of my books, gets into my readers' heads, and slowly alters their perception.

There is a tremendous problem in modern culture. We have become used to everything coming to us with tremendous speed and ease. It is a culture where discipline and patience is almost impossible to develop.