I have spent a good many years since―too many, I think―being ashamed about what I write. I think I was forty before I realized that almost every writer of fiction or poetry who has ever published a line has been accused by someone of wasting his or her God-given talent. If you write (or paint or dance or sculpt or sing, I suppose), someone will try to make you feel lousy about it, that's all.

If God rewards us on earth for good deeds—the Old Testament suggests it’s so, and the Puritans certainly believed it—then maybe Satan rewards us for evil ones.

I know life is hard, I think everyone knows that in their hearts, but why dos it have to be cruel, as well? Why does it have to bite?

But sorry is the Kool-Aid of human emotions. [...] True sorrow is as rare as true love.

But it's hard for a man to give up all his pleasures, even when they don't pleasure him no more.

Man may have been made in the image of God, but human society was made in the image of His opposite number, and is always trying to get back home.

I believe most people are essentially good. I know that I am. It's you I'm not entirely sure of.