A hurt body and mind aren't just like a dictatorship; they are a dictatorship. There is no tyrant as merciless as pain, no despot so cruel as confusion.

Directing teenage actors is like juggling jars of nitro-glycerine: exhilarating and dangerous.

You see something, then it clicks with something else, and it will make a story. But you never know when it's going to happen.

Whenever I publish a book, I feel like a trapper caught by the Iroquois. They're all lined up with Tomahawks, and the idea is to run through with your head down, and everybody gets to take a swing. They hit you in the head, the back, the ass, and the balls.

I'm one of those people who doesn't really know what he thinks until he writes it down.

You don't always talk with your mouth. Sometimes what you say with your mouth hardly matters at all. You have to signify

You can see the goldenrod, that most tenacious and pernicious and beauteous of all New England flora, bowing away from the wind like a great and silent congregation.