You do the right thing even if it makes you feel bad. The purpose of life is not to be happy but to be worthy of happiness.

The hardest thing was learning to write. I was 13, and the only writing I had done was for Social Studies. It consisted of copying passages right out of the encyclopedia

I think if the writing comes too easily, it shows - it's usually hard to read.

Many people find it easy to imagine unseen webs of malevolent conspiracy in the world, and they are not always wrong. But there is also an innocence that conspires to hold humanity together, and it is made of people who can never fully know the good that they have done.

You can write about anything, and if you write well enough, even the reader with no intrinsic interest in the subject will become involved.

among a coward's weapons, cynicism is the nastiest of all

When I select a topic, it's usually a commitment of two to three years of my life