“Masks beneath masks until suddenly the bare bloodless skull.”

We cannot allow religious hooligans to place limiting points on thought.

What’s real and what’s true aren’t necessarily the same.

For every snake, there is a ladder; for every ladder, a snake.

Our lives, our stories, flowed into one another’s, were no longer our own, individual, discrete.

One of the strange things about violent and authoritarian regimes is they don’t like the glare of negative publicity.

No, I don’t think it’s fair to label Islam ‘violent.’ But I will say that to my knowledge, no writer has ever gone into hiding for criticizing the Amish.

The only people who see the whole picture,’ he murmured, ‘are the ones who step out of the frame.

One of the things a writer is for is to say the unsayable, speak the unspeakable and ask difficult questions.

It is very, very easy not to be offended by a book. You just have to shut it.

I don’t dictate to anyone what to believe and what not to. And I don’t want that to be dictated to me either.

Even when things are at their worst, there’s a little voice in your head saying, ‘Good story!’

If you’re offended, it’s your problem.

If somebody’s trying to shut you up, sing louder, and if possible, better.

Self-censorship is a lie to yourself; if you are going to be trying to seriously create art, to create literary art, and you decide to hold back, to censor yourself, then you are a fool to yourself and it would be better that you kept your mouth shut and did not speak.

We are the storytelling animal.

Stories in families are colossally important. Every family has stories: some funny, some proud, some embarrassing, some shameful. Knowing them is proof of belonging to the family.

Upon receiving Holy Communion, the Adorable Blood of Jesus Christ really flows in our veins and His Flesh is really blended with ours.

I had all of the love in the world but I could not see it. We are blind when we don’t know how to love the very bones and blood that make us.

Family is not who’s blood is in you, is who you love and who loves you.

The heart has no tears to give,–it drops only blood, bleeding itself away in silence.

Shame bleeds through generation to generation. That is not the legacy I wish for you.

Do you love your idea? Does it feel right on instinct? Are you willing to bleed for it?

Misery doesn’t love just any company it desires the kind presence only loneliness feeds but that’s not love at all. – love doesn’t eat it bleeds.

I woke up with the warrior in my blood.