“Not only will two different readers get something different but so will a single reader at different points in his life.”

It’s exciting having a student who is not used to expressing their emotional side and bringing that out in them and see that developing and helping to nurture that.

I should have written books instead of reading them.

Continents of memory had been lost.

Faith is the ability to honor stillness at some moments, and at others to ride the passion and exuberance.

After a while the car becomes just another thing that he owns. Moreover, when his neighbor next door buys two cars, in an instant our man feels wretchedly poor and deprived.

In fiction writing ideas have to be handled extremely carefully.

I would think that you are more fluent with the rational. It has its appeal. But the irrational permits a greater exercise of … shall we say, power.

What I am very disturbed about is this trend of everything happening faster and faster and faster and there being more and more general noise in the world, and less and less time for quiet reflection on who we are, and where we’re going.

Nature is purposeless. Nature simply is. We may find nature beautiful or terrible, but those feelings are human constructions. Such utter and complete mindlessness is hard for us to accept.

But what is the past? Could it be, the firmness of the past is just illusion? Could the past be a kaleidoscope, a pattern of images that shift with each disturbance of a sudden breeze, a laugh, a thought? And if the shift is everywhere, how would we know?

Making that book into a film is going to be quite a challenge.

Who would fare better in this world of fitful time? Those who have seen the future and live only one life? Or those who have not seen the future and wait to live life? Or those who deny the future and live two lives?

For me, spirituality includes the belief in things larger than ourselves, an appreciation of nature and beauty, a sensitivity to the world, a feeling of shared connection with other living things, a desire to help people less fortunate than ourselves.

A novel has to be an emotional experience, a trip of the imagination, and because science has raised so many issues that concern and affect humans, it’s a good starting place for me.

Just didn’t know whether I would finish the book much less for it to come close to what I intended. I think that for any novel you never know exactly how the book is going to turn out…

I spend a lot of time just listening to the ospreys. I watch them go through their life cycle. They spend the winter in South America.

I expected to be a pretty good NBA point guard and hopefully win a championship. But MVP and all this stuff? Not really.

Also, when you get made fun of-when people point out your weaknesses, it’s an opportunity for you to rise above.

In love, writing is dangerous, not to mention pointless.

I had reached a point in my career in which I was ready to try something new in my writing, and the idea of a novel has always been in the back of my mind.

You don’t move just because you want to go from this point to that point – the body has to be using the words as well as you vocally use the words.

In the back of my mind, I can never forget this could be gone tomorrow – and at this point I think the odds are against me…

There’s no point in being scared of just trying.

I wasn’t a point guard. I was a killer.