Anger is a violent emotion, vindictive, and as dangerous to he who is driven by it as to anyone on whom it is turned.

It was one of those rare times when remembering the dead was more inmportant than tending to the needs of the living.

Every talent is unearned, however, and with it comes a solemn obligation to use it as fully and as wisely as possible.

I've a long list of things I don't know how I've done, but I've done them. In the end, it's always about perseverance.

Life's mysterious, strange, and full of wonders - and only a fool withdraws from it willingly and lets it pass him by.

This world, which has the potential to be Eden, is instead the hell before Hell. In our arrogance, we have made it so.

You can't always win arguments as a writer, but you have to just go ahead and say, well, I'm doing it that way anyway.

In our age, self-indulgence and self-destruction, rather than self-sacrifice, are the foundations for new heroic myths.

Writing isn't a source of pain. It's psychic chemotherapy. It reduces your psychological tumors and relieves your pain.

On the Road that I have taken, one day walking I awaken, amazed to see where I've come, where I'm going, where I'm from.

Dare we linger, dare we skate? Dare we laugh or celebrate, knowing we may strain the ice? Preserve the ice at any price?

While I like people, I do also like being alone in a room and seeing what you can do with a particular theme or subject.

Nearly everything that was fun, of course, was also a little dangerous: riding roller coasters, skydiving, gambling, sex.

But the more people we love and the more deeply we love them, the more vulnerable we are to loss and grief and loneliness.

I really believe that everyone has a talent, ability, or skill that he can mine to support himself and to succeed in life.

The rain wasn't the usual glittering silver, but dark and dirty, as if nature were a scrubwoman wringing out a filthy mop.

I believe that I was a dog in a past life. That's the only thing that would explain why I like to snack on Purina Dog Chow.

Loyal companions are an unequaled grace, stanching fear before it bleeds you numb, a reliable antidote for creeping despair.

If you want to publish two books a year under your own name and your publisher doesn't, maybe you need a different publisher.

These days, people spent too much time striving to understand their feelings - and then ended up with none that were genuine.

I just became fascinated with how complex and unlikely the universe is and life is and Catholicism gives me an answer to that.

A plot without action is like pasta without garlic, like Dolly Parton without cleavage, and like a writer without his similes.

We have a responsibility to stand watch over one another, we are watchers, all of us, watchers, guarding against the darkness.

A fine line separates the weary recluse from the fearful hermit. Finer still is the line between hermit and bitter misanthrope.

The world howls for social justice, but when it comes to social responsibility, you sometimes cant even hear crickets chirping.

A great deal of phenomenal experience has fostered in me a flexibility of the mind and imagination that some might call madness

Cowards shrink from toil and peril, Vulgar souls attempt and fail; Men of mettle, nothing daunted, Persevere till they prevail.

A long walk and grooming with a well-mannered dog is a Zen experience that leaves you refreshed and in a creative frame of mind.

A silent dark...as black as a moonless lake, as a ravine's wings, darkness there and nothing more, merely this and nothing more.

Grief is a healthy emotion, and it's healthy to embrace it. By accepting loss, we clarify our values and the meaning of our lives.

Human beings are such knotted, desperate pieces of work-it's a rare thing to know one completely, to the core, and still love him.

Books had shown me, however, that all people everywhere wanted their lives to have purpose and meaning. This longing was universal.

Every human being has appetites difficult to control but far fewer have humility, gentleness, and an awareness of their weaknesses.

When a liar became too skilled at deception, he could lose the ability to discern truth, and could himself be more easily deceived.

My life has a mysterious purpose that I don't understand, and day by day, conflict by conflict, I learn by going where I have to go.

If your work is deathwork, one weapon is not enough, just as a plumber would not answer an urgent service call with a single wrench.

Humanity was drawn to turmoil and self-destruction as inevitably as the earth was drawn to complete its annual revolution of the sun.

He once told me that an August evening was "as hot as three toads in a Cuisinart," a comparison that left me blinking two days later.

Fate isn’t one straight road…there are forks in it, many different routes to different ends. We have the free will to choose the path.

The true nature of the world was weirder than any bizarre fabric that anyone might weave from the warp and weft of imagination's loom.

To many people, free will is a license to rebel not against what is unjust or hard in life but against what is best for them and true.

The only thing we can't buy more of is time." she said. "And dodo birds. We can't buy any more of them. they're extinct. And dinosaurs.

Every writer has his own voice. Other than that I'm always trying to do change-ups and publishers haven't always been happy about that.

Change isn't easy. Changing the way you live means changing the way you think, means changing what you believe about life. That's hard.

The destruction that barbarians leave behind has a grim fascination, doesn't it? We're reminded how thin is the veneer of civilization.

Although charismatic, James Dean is no Harrison Ford. In the majority of his movies, sooner or later he got the crap beaten out of him.

The heart is an artist that paints over what profoundly disturbs it, leaving on the canvas a less dark, less sharp version of the truth.

Holy men tell us life is a mystery. They embrace that concept happily. But some mysteries bite and bark and come to get you in the dark.

The world is a very complex and interesting place and that is what I really want my fiction to say: wake up to how amazing the world is.

Sometimes many publishers prefer that you write the same book every time, but I have a low boredom threshold so that isn't going to happen.

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