“Someone wrote a Wikipedia entry about me, identifying me as an atheist because I’d said in a book I wrote that I wasn’t a believer.”

All these things you expect meaning to come from, and sometimes it comes when you’re not expecting it.

It isn’t necessary to be rich and famous to be happy. It’s only necessary to be rich.

For me, I find that even though I’ve accomplished a few things in my life, looking back on accomplishments doesn’t give me a sense of satisfaction.

Your assumptions are your windows on the world. Scrub them off every once in a while or the light won’t come in. If you challenge your own, you won’t be so quick to accept the unchallenged assumptions of others.

When I’m writing, I want to try to be seen as a good writer.

artists try to say things that can’t be said. in a fragile net of words, gestures, or colors, we hope to capture a feeling.

Originality is unexplored territory. You get there by carrying a canoe – you can’t take a taxi.

Your assumptions are your windows on the world. Scrub them off every once in awhile, or the light won’t come in.

The other one, and probably an equal pleasure, is finding out how I can be helpful and then really being helpful.

War is war and Hell is hell, and if you ask me, War is a lot worse.

Republicans are as capable of coming up with great ideas and moving this country along as anyone – they just don’t do it.

And I think belief is one of those things that comes to people in their own way. And just because I believe in something doesn’t mean I think that you should.

I would box them into a corner with a badly formed question, and they didn’t know how to get out of it. Now, I let them take me through it step by step, and I listen.

How can I ever hope to communicate something to you unless I get signals back from you that I’m on the right track or that I’ve started at some place that you’re familiar with?

No man or woman of the humblest sort can really be strong, gentle and good, without the world being better for it, without somebody being helped and comforted by the very existence of that goodness.

Being mystified is a good beginning, because you won’t do what you’ve done before.