“Don’t try to make life a mathematics problem with yourself in the center and everything coming out equal. When you’re good, bad things can still happen. And if you’re bad, you can still be lucky.”

Downstream is always someone else’s up.

Wars and elections are both too big and too small to matter in the long run. The daily work – that goes on, it adds up.

The power is in the balance: we are our injuries, as much as we are our successes.

The loudest sound on earth, she thought, is a man with nothing to do.

I do my best work if I think about what it is I have to offer.

Vengeance does not subtract any numbers from the equation of murder; it only adds them.

It is harrowing for me to try to teach 20-year-old students, who earnestly want to improve their writing. The best I can think to tell them is: Quit smoking, and observe posted speed limits. This will improve your odds of getting old enough to be wise.

What keeps me awake at the wheel is the thrill of trying something completely new with each book. I’m not a risk-taker in life, generally speaking, but as a writer I definitely choose the fast car, the impossible rock face, the free fall.

…our best task is to move forward without insisting others slide backward.

Like kids who only ever get socks for Christmas, but still believe with all their hearts in Santa.

…nothing momentous comes in this world unless it comes on the shoulders of kindness.

This is what it means to be alone: everyone is connected to everyone else, their bodies are a bright liquid life flowing around you, sharing a single heart that drives them to move all together. If the shark comes they will all escape, and leave you to be eaten.

Be still, and the world is bound to turn herself inside out to entertain you. Everywhere you look, joyful noise is clanging to drown out quiet desperation.

It seems very safe to me to be surrounded by green growing things and water.

The very least you can do in your life is to figure out what you hope for!

Growing food was the first activity that gave us enough prosperity to stay in one place, form complex social groups, tell our stories, and build our cities.

The harder I prepare, the luckier I seem to get.

I’m lucky. Usually you’re dead to get your own museum, but I’m still alive to see mine.

Proud is an understatement. Lucky to be part of a generation that values not only sustainability for our species but the sanctity of our planet. Let’s be the change.

I was lucky in that when the opportunity came, I was prepared to meet it.

How lucky am I to have something that makes saying goodbye so hard.

You can’t always get what you want. But, if you’re lucky, you get what you need.

We are going to die, and that makes us the lucky ones. Most people are never going to die because they are never going to be born.

You always need a good friend to lift you up, tell you the truth and if you’re lucky, sing a song with!