“A dog can’t think that much about what he’s doing, he just does what feels right.”

Memory is a complicated thing, a relative to truth, but not its twin.

One of the very first things I figured out about life…is that it’s better to be a hopeful person than a cynical, grumpy one, because you have to live in the same world either way, and if you’re hopeful, you have more fun.

Every life is different because you passed this way and touched history… Listen being dead is not worse than being alive. It is different though. You could say the view is larger.

I had decided early on that if I couldn’t dress elegant, I’d dress memorable.

He was my father. I own half his genes, and all of his history. Believe this: the mistakes are part of the story. I am born of a man who believed he could tell nothing but the truth, while he set down for all time the Poisonwood Bible.

I don’t understand how any good art could fail to be political.

Fiction and essays can create empathy for the theoretical stranger.

Nothing to do with nature, unless you count human nature.

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.

Mankind spends much more on training pilots of aircraft than it does to train the nuclear reactor operators.

It is with a word as with an arrow–once let it loose and it does not return.

She may have had enough time to deal with things. What if she does come back? What will you do?” Grant asked me. What would I do? I’d beg.

I’m not a stand up at all, it’s such a fear of mine. My sister does it, and she’s really great at it.

I spend a lot of time doing carpentry. Sometimes there is nothing that gives me the contentment that sawing a piece of wood does.

A digital camera does have many advantages and I was a believer that digital video would be a big influence on film-making.

The American people have no control over what the military does. We have no say in American foreign policy.

Sometimes chemistry does the trick, and other times, you have to forge that with the people.