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.

I know that to write you have to have stories you want to tell. You have to keep your mind alive, and you have to work hard.

I do believe in God. I think God has given so much power to people, and intelligence, and said, 'Well, you are on your own. Maybe I'm tired, I need a nap. You are mature. Why don't you look after yourselves?' And I think He's been sleeping too much.

Public education rests precariously on the skill and virtue of the people at the bottom of the institutional pyramid.

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.

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

If you live in the same small place long enough, something you don't like is bound to happen