At first, I spend about four hours a day writing. Toward the end of a book, I spend up to 16 hours a day on it, because all I want to do is make it good and get it done.

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.

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

...Attempts at imitation would put the emphasis where it didn't belong. The goal was to improve the lives of others, not oneself.

That's when I feel most alive, he told me once on an airplane, when I'm helping people.

God gives us humans everything we need to flourish, but he's not the one who's supposed to divvy up the loot. That charge was laid upon us

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