A lot of us grow up and we grow out of the literal interpretation that we get when we're children, but we bear the scars all our life. Whether they're scars of beauty or scars of ugliness, it's pretty much in the eye of the beholder.

When his life was ruined, his family killed, his farm destroyed, Job knelt down on the ground and yelled up to the heavens, 'Why god? Why me?' and the thundering voice of God answered, 'There's just something about you that pisses me off.'

Americans are apocalyptic by nature. The reason why is that we've always had so much, so we live in deadly fear that people are going to take it away from us.

What charitable 1 percenters can't do is assume responsibility - America's national responsibilities: the care of its sick and its poor, the education of its young, the repair of its failing infrastructure, the repayment of its staggering war debts.

French is the language that turns dirt into romance.

And in real life endings aren't always neat, whether they're happy endings, or whether they're sad endings.

We've switched from a culture that was interested in manufacturing, economics, politics - trying to play a serious part in the world - to a culture that's really entertainment-based.

Fiction is the truth inside the lie.

Only enemies speak the truth; friends and lovers lie endlessly, caught in the web of duty.

I love the movies, and when I go to see a movie that's been made from one of my books, I know that it isn't going to be exactly like my novel because a lot of other people have interpreted it. But I also know it has an idea that I'll like because that idea occurred to me, and I spent a year, or a year and a half of my life working on it.

I guess when you turn off the main road, you have to be prepared to see some funny houses.

Talent is cheaper than table salt. What separates the talented individual from the successful one is a lot of hard work.

You cannot hope to sweep someone else away by the force of your writing until it has been done to you.

And as a writer, one of the things that I've always been interested in doing is actually invading your comfort space. Because that's what we're supposed to do. Get under your skin, and make you react.

I watched Titanic when I got back home from the hospital, and cried. I knew that my IQ had been damaged.

Wherever you write is supposed to be a little bit of a refuge, a place where you can get away from the world. The more closed in you are, the more you're forced back on your own imagination.

I never saw any of my dad's stories. My mother said he had piles and piles of manuscripts.