“I learned to produce whether I wanted to or not. It would be easy to say oh, I have writer’s block, oh, I have to wait for my muse. I don’t. Chain that muse to your desk and get the job done.”

Don’t wait for the muse. She has a lousy work ethic. Writers just write.

Sleeping alone seemed unnatural to me, and pitiful, something done in hospitals or when you’re contagious.

It’s what you do that makes your soul.

The average food item on a U.S. grocery shelf has traveled farther than most families go on their annual vacations.

It’s a funny thing: people often ask how I discipline myself to write. I can’t begin to understand the question. For me, the discipline is turning off the computer and leaving my desk to do something else.

She is inhumanly alone. And then, all at once, she isn’t.

I prefer to remain anomalous.

To think is not always to see.

There are some who’d hardly lift a finger for kindness, but they would haul up a load of rock to dump on some soul they think’s been too lucky.

A good title holds magic, some cognitive dissonance, a little grit between the teeth, but above all it is the jumping-off place into wonder.

Write a nonfiction book, and be prepared for the legion of readers who are going to doubt your fact. But write a novel, and get ready for the world to assume every word is true.

This is how Americans think. You believe that if something terrible happens to someone, they must have deserved it.

The most important part of a story is the piece of it you don’t know.

Wherever I am, let me never forget to distinguish want from need

Sadness is more or less like a head cold – with patience, it passes. Depression is like cancer.

It occurs to her that there is one thing about people you can never understand well enough: how entirely inside themselves they are.

Our life is like a block of ice which is melting away every moment. Before it spends itself, devote it to the service of others. Education in Human Values is designed to prepare everyone for this life of dedicated service.

Your future is entirely way too bright for you to let anything or anyone block your light.

Secrecy, censorship, dishonesty, and blocking of communication threaten all the basic needs.

Blocking people is good for your peace of mind.

Nature’s silence is its one remark, and every flake of world is a chip off that old mute and immutable block.

Block out all negative energy, and just love.

A stumbling block to the pessimist is a stepping-stone to the optimist.

A stumbling block to the pessimist is a stepping-stone to the optimist.