“In the day-to-day, farm work is stress relief for me. At the end of the day, I love having this other career – my anti-job – that keeps me in shape and gives me control over a vegetal domain.”

We’re surrounded by mandates, and I believe that literature should be mandate-free. I feel very strongly about that.

Does a man become a revolutionary out of the belief he’s entitled to joy rather than submission?

I did it to win love, and to prove myself capable. Not to move mountains. In my opinions, mountains don’t move. They only look changed when you look down on them from great height.

I know I’m a rare person, a trained scientist who writes fiction, because so few contemporary novelists engage with science.

Now I’m starting to think he wasn’t supposed to be my whole life, he was just this doorway to me.

I live in a rural part of Virginia surrounded by farms and farmers.

Households that have lost the soul of cooking from their routines may not know what they are missing: the song of a stir-fry sizzle, the small talk of clinking measuring spoons, the yeasty scent of rising dough, the painting of flavors onto a pizza before it slides into the oven.

Parenting is something that happens mostly while you’re thinking of something else.

The most important thing about a person is always the thing you don’t know.

Back then I was still appalled that God would set down his barefoot boy and girl dollies into an Eden where, presumably, He had just turned loose elephantiasis and microes that eat the human cornea. Now I understand, God is not just rooting fo the dollies.

As long as I kept moving, my grief streamed out behind me like a swimmer’s long hair in water. I knew the weight was there but it didn’t touch me. Only when I stopped did the slick, dark stuff of it come floating around my face, catching my arms and throat till I began to drown. So I just didn’t stop.

The changes we dread most may contain our salvation.

If you’re standing in the manure pile, it’s somebody’s job to mention the stink.

All of the promises of politicians, generals, madmen, and crusaders that war can create peace have yet to be borne out.

Every time I step onto an airplane, I turn to the right and take a good, hard stare into the maw of the engine. I don’t know what I’m looking for. I just do it.

No human eye had looked at this moth before; no one would see its friends. So much detail goes unnoticed in the world.

In my career, there have been three things that were challenging: playing gay; playing a Jewish woman; and playing Anton Chekhov. The scariest part was playing Chekhov!

Don’t be afraid to ask people ‘why,’ ‘what if.’ Don’t be afraid to attack your career. Get in the game, don’t stay on the sidelines.

The failure of The Cable Guy impacted my career. I had to start writing and acting again.

I can see myself staying at Blackburn for the rest of my career – unless I move to another club at some stage

I have no particular career agenda.

It’s funny, but when I arrived in California to start college I was much more interested in becoming a surfer and cruise along in life from one beach to the next. I didn’t plan out any huge career for myself.

I always pray for God’s guidance in my life and he always provides it. He opens the right doors he shuts the right doors. And I have tremendous faith in him. He just guided my career in an amazing way.

I feel closer to the artist I was when I was 19 now then I have done in other stages of my career.