“I wondered if my smile was as big as hers. Maybe as big. But not as beautiful.”

I bring my best instincts to my work. For instance – and I come by this naturally, or I think I do – I am a very good judge of character.

But love was always something heavy for me. Something I had to carry.

I didn’t think it was my job to accept what everyone said I was and who I should be.

I don’t want to just discuss the issues – I want family to be a real part of the character of the novels I write, and I don’t like to write things that feel like issue books.

You are thirst and thirst is all I know

I wondered about the science of storms and how sometimes it seemed that a storm wanted to break the world and how the world refused to break.

Absent parents aren’t abusive per se. They’re neglectful. They love in a very imperfect way. There are parents like that, and they do love their daughters and sons, but they’re not parents in the way that we might think of it.

Mostly, I think people are fake. Well, what do you expect? The fake world we live in conspires to make us all fakes.

Water was something he loved, something he respected. He understood its beauty and its dangers. He talked about swimming as if it were a way of life.

I do that with all of my characters. They have one of the flaws I have, and I zero in on that flaw.

I think writing books is a way for me to work out certain issues. I write about what matters to me, always.

If you can quit for a day, you can quit for a lifetime.

Another secret of the universe: Sometimes pain was like a storm that came out of nowhere. The clearest summer could end in a downpour. Could end in lightning and thunder.

It’s a complex thing when you’re writing a novel, because so much of it is conscious and planned and deliberate, and so much of it is not, and it has to be a dance between the conscious and the unconscious.

It gave me something that is really important to me. So I always think about my faith. I always have it, and sometimes I can’t talk about it, and sometimes I can. I am like an adolescent in that way. Teens are asking questions: who is God and what does it mean to have faith?

Words were different when they lived inside of you.

The Universe knows what it’s doing. So don’t develop a big ego, and don’t be afraid.

What I notice about people who are gifted in filmmaking is that they’re great thinkers. They engage with big ideas and they engage with people.

Wall Street is one big turf war. By benefiting one person you are disadvantaging another person.

Tension, especially with regard to horror, is a very difficult thing to sustain in the big sense.

Not that i had a big arse but even that was toned.

Unless you’re God, you are never too “big” to be a fan.

I like big doses of grief when I read: Richard Yates, Flannery O’Connor, Kenzabaro Oe, Thomas Bernhard.

Making a big commercial movie is hard when you think about how many of them flop.