“The trust of the innocent is the liar’s most useful tool.”

There is no gain without risk, perhaps no risk without love.

Discipline and constant work are the whetstones upon which the dull knife of talent is honed until it becomes sharp enough, hopefully, to cut through even the toughest meat and gristle.

I dreamed of you. I dreamed you were wandering in the dark, and so was I. We found each other. We found each other in the dark.

Sometimes there is absolutely no difference at all between salvation and damnation.

The scariest moment is always just before you start.

The scariest moment is always just before you start.

Now I think all of us were born with a hole in our hearts, and we go around looking for the person who can fill it. You, you fill me up.

Time takes it all, whether you want it to or not.

If the stuff you’re writing is not for yourself, it won’t work.

We lie best when we lie to ourselves.

The mind can calculate, but the spirit yearns, and the heart knows what the heart knows.

Anything with the power to make you laugh over thirty years later isn’t a waste of time. I think something like that is very close to immortality.

We don’t know the days that will change our lives. Probably just as well.

French is the language that turns dirt into romance.

In both writing and sleeping, we learn to be physically still at the same time we are encouraging our minds to unlock from the humdrum rational thinking of our daytime lives.

Friends don’t spy; true friendship is about privacy, too.