“I have a horror of being self-indulgent and wasting time, and there is that risk in doing this kind of work. Are you totally deluded in sitting down at a desk every day and trying to write something? Is it self-indulgent, or might it possibly lead to something worthwhile?”

Somewhere along the way America became a giant mall with a country attached.

Haiti is unique – the first successful slave revolt in history, the first black republic etc., and then when you get into the culture, the voodoo, and that wonderful synchretization of Christian and African belief and symbology, it’s like nothing the world has ever seen.

It’s amazing what happens when you stick yourself in a place and let things take their more or less natural course.

Eruptions of talent continue to happen in Haiti, in spite of everything.

The Kessler Theater is one such gem, an Art Deco beauty … for a slice of real life, there’s always the Kessler.

I really had to decide why I was writing. I had no interest in going back to law; I very briefly – for about six hours – considered going to get my MBA, but in the end, I realized that the only work I really wanted to do was write.

I started publishing stories in small magazines early on, but after seven or eight or nine years you feel like you need a little more than that to show for your efforts.

I think if you spend much time dwelling on influence you can get self-conscious about every line you write. That’s a great way to freeze up.

I thought when I started writing that I’d have a book out in four or five years, and as it became apparent that that wasn’t going to happen, I became increasingly frustrated and unsure of myself.

I realized I was never going to have any peace with myself unless I made an honest stab at trying to write.

Maybe the light’s at the other end of the tunnel.

I took two fiction-writing courses in college and majored in literature. I felt that I had a knack though I wouldn’t go so far as to call it a talent. But it scared me. I felt it was a childish thing wanting to write and that I would forget about it eventually.

I never listen to music when I’m writing.

By the end of the first decade of writing, I considered myself a confirmed failure in the eyes of the world.

The funny thing is, about the time I let go of any aspiration toward worldly success, that’s about the time I started writing decent work.

There was no such thing as perfection in this world, only moments of such extreme transparency that you forgot yourself, a holy mercy if there ever was one.

When the restlessness of the mind, intellect and self is stilled through the practice of Yoga, the yogi by the grace of the Spirit within himself finds fulfillment.

I didn’t graduate high school, so I never got a teacher’s education, I’m mostly self-read, self-taught.

When you lose your hair, it has an impact on confidence and your overall self-esteem whether it affects your career or your love life.

There are many types of emotional abuse but most is done in an attempt to control or subjugate another person.

Whatever you gain through self promotion you’ll have to sustain through self promotion. When our promotion comes from God, He sustains it.

There are moments when, like all of us, you get a bit self-conscious and you’d rather not be living any of your day in public. Those are the awkward times, but you’ve got to have fun with it.

It never ceases to amaze me how many of baseball’s wounds are self-inflicted.

Emotional abuse is like brainwashing in that it systematically wears away at the victim’s self-confidence, sense of self, trust in her perceptions and self-concept.