Hug and kiss whoever helped get you - financially, mentally, morally, emotionally - to this day. Parents, mentors, friends, teachers. If you're too uptight to do that, at least do the old handshake thing, but I recommend a hug and a kiss. Don't let the sun go down without saying thank you to someone, and without admitting to yourself that absolutely no one gets this far alone.

No one can be as intellectually slothful as a really smart person

My heart's with you, Bill, no matter how it turns out. My heart is with all of them, and I think that, even if we forget each other, we'll remember in our dreams.

Marriage is referred to in the bible as “mystical union,” and it really is in the sense that two people who don’t know each other get together. I’m always interested in how much you find out about the other person and how much you don’t find out.

I believe the first draft of a book — even a long one — should take no more than three months…Any longer and — for me, at least — the story begins to take on an odd foreign feel, like a dispatch from the Romanian Department of Public Affairs, or something broadcast on high-band shortwave duiring a period of severe sunspot activity.

I choose to believe in God, but I have serious doubts.

There is no such thing as a happy ending. I never met a single one to equal "Once upon a time.