“Everyone has talent. What is rare is the courage to follow the talent to the dark place where it leads.”

No one ever found wisdom without also being a fool. Writers, alas, have to be fools in public, while the rest of the human race can cover its tracks.

There are no atheists on turbulent airplanes.

Art is always an energy exchange.

It’s horrible getting older. I mean, it’s wonderful because you see the circles of life get completed. But it’s horrible losing your looks.

There is a rhythm to the ending of a marriage just like the rhythm of a courtship, only backward.

Ambivalence is a wonderful tune to dance to. It has a rhythm all its own.

The camera creates a magical transformation. It’s not enough to exist; we must chronicle that existence. …

A new dog never replaces an old dog; it merely expands the heart. If you have loved many dogs, your heart is very big.

Photographs are the most curious indicators of reality.

Fame means millions of people have the wrong idea of who you are.

It’s easier to write about pain than about joy. Joy is wordless.

If we are all made of God, it is our friends who remind us. We pass the gift of God to them. They pass it back to us when we need it most.

Narrative- and image-making creatures like humans don’t feel any experience is complete unless it’s recorded.

The words carry their own momentum. A confession in motion tends to stay in motion. Newton’s first law of jealousy.

You are always naked when you start writing; you are always as if you had never written anything before; you are always a beginner.

The trick is not how much pain you feel – but how much joy you feel

As a rule, dictatorships guarantee safe streets and terror of the doorbell. In democracy the streets may be unsafe after dark, but the most likely visitor in the early hours will be the milkman.

Until the 1990s, there were few reliable observations about movement at the scale of the entire universe, which is the only scale dark energy effects.

I have a few minor rules for myself but I break them all the time. For example, when translating from Romance languages to English, there is often a choice between a Latinate cognate and a Germanic equivalent.

George Bush is just as much in the dark as I am, and it scares me.

Death to a good man is but passing through a dark entry, out of one little dusky room of his Father’s house into another that is fair and large, lightsome and glorious, and divinely entertaining.

The Holy Scripture is like a diamond: in the dark it is like a piece of glass, but as soon as the light strikes it the water begins to sparkle, and the scintillation of life greets us.

Whatever’s inside making me what I am, it’s like film. Film only works in the dark. Tear it all open and let in the light and you kill it.

Proximity to the crowd, to the majority view, spells the death of creativity. For a soul can create only when alone, and some are chosen for the flowering that takes place in the dark avenues of night.