It's so hard to live that one needs a support around life. We can't live without some supernatural support.

I've always had individual friends, but I didn't find the people I wanted to learn from as an adult until my midtwenties.

I think a lot of people try to edit themselves out and I think that's a big mistake, because the person being interviewed is responding to a person, and if you don't know who that person is then you don't really know what's going on with the person being interviewed.

Writing fiction is a good way to inhabit other minds, if not other lives.

When I'm editing, I try to bring out some dramatic structure. I think it is about theater in some way; it is a little play.

It's fun to give pleasure to people.

I hadn't realized until this week that in [Moses'] youth he killed a man, an Egyptian, and buried him under some sandI used to worry that I wasn't enough like Jesus, but yesterday I remembered who was my king; a man who, when God addressed him and told him to lead the people out of Egypt, said, 'But I'm not a good talker! Couldn't you ask my brother instead?' So it should not be so hard to come at this life with a bit of honesty. I don't need to be great like the leader of the Christian people. I can be a bumbling, murderous coward like the King of the Jews.