There is only one salvation for you: take yourself up, and make yourself responsible for all the sins of men. For indeed it is so, my friend, and the moment you make yourself sincerely responsible for everything and everyone, you will see at once tha...
If you can bring yourself to apply your imagination to finding the possible favorable outcomes of undesired developments, even if only as an exercise, you'll see that it fosters creativity. This suggestion is much more than a way to find the silver l...
If the characters are not wicked, the book is." We must tell stories the way God does, stories in which a sister must float her little brother on a river with nothing but a basket between him and the crocodiles. Stories in which a king is a coward, a...
Don’t try to present your art by making other people read or hear or see or touch it; make them feel it. Wear your art like your heart on your sleeve and keep it alive by making people feel a little better. Feel a little lighter. Create art in orde...
There’s a beautiful poem at the beginning of a collection of books we call the Bible. In that poem, it is written: "Then God said, ‘Let us make man.’” God then recognized that it was not good for man to be alone. We can all agree on that one,...
I think memory is the most important asset of human beings. It’s a kind of fuel; it burns and it warms you. My memory is like a chest: There are so many drawers in that chest, and when I want to be a fifteen-year-old boy, I open up a certain drawer...
The brown and charred rags that hung from the sides of it, I presently recognized as the decaying vestiges of books. They had long since dropped to pieces, and every semblance of print had left them. But here and there were warped boards and cracked ...
We human beings build houses because we're alive but we write books because we're mortal. We live in groups because we're sociable but we read because we know we're alone. Reading offers a kind of companionship that takes no one's place but that no o...
Science fiction, as a genre is fundamentally about ideas. It's about asking an impossible question, "What if...?" and building a story out of the answer. Romance on the other hand, is fundamentally about relationships. The hypothetical romance transp...
My young sisters, we have such hope for you. We have such great expectations for you. Don't settle for less than what the Lord wants you to be... Give me a young woman who loves home and family, who reads and ponders the scriptures daily, who has a b...
How dare you! What is your name? I shall make it a sin to be spoken.” The braveness of his chuckle and grin made me step back. “Garrett. My name is Garrett and please make my name a sin to speak. Maybe that way I won’t have people like you scre...
If you want to know what we are, look at the men reading books, searching in the dark pages of history for the lost word, the key to the mystery of the living peace. We are factory hands, field hands, mill hands, searching, building and molding struc...
I will say that my philosophy as a writer, since the very start of my career, has been one of “show, don’t tell.” Whatever might be happening in my books, I try to put the reader into the middle of it, rather than summarizing the action. That r...
May in Varanasi. 25° and wet. It's like the 6th circle of the inferno here, Edith - where they flail the arses off the howling heretics and the men who fuck marine life etc. NATO's stomping on the Balkans while India and Pakistan threaten one anothe...
When my head is in the typewriter the last thing on my mind is some imaginary reader. I don’t have an audience; I have a set of standards. But when I think of my work out in the world, written and published, I like to imagine it’s being read by s...
The best stories (whether book or movie) involve redemption. If you are someone who believes you have made too many mistakes or your life has been too "bad" for God to want you, think of it this way: God, the greatest story teller, has not yet finish...
We all dream dreams of unity, of purity; we all dream that there's an authoritative voice out there that will explain things, including ourselves. If it wasn't for our longing for these things, I doubt the novel or the short story would exist in its ...
Don't make up problems you don't have yet. It's not a problem until it's a real problem. Most of the things you worry about never happen anyway. The decisions you make today don't need to last forever. If circumstances change, your decisions CAN chan...
Baloo: [singing] Now when you pick a pawpaw / Or a prickly pear/ And you prick a raw paw / Well, next time beware / Don't pick the prickly pear by the paw / When you pick a pear try to use the claw / But you don't need to use the claw / When you pick...
Baloo: So just try and... relax. Yeah. Cool it. Fall apart in my backyard. 'Cause let me tell you something, little britches: if you act like that bee at... Uh-uh. You're working too hard. And don't spend your time lookin' around for something you wa...
Kaa: [hypnotizing Mowgli and coiling him up] Please, go to sleep, sleep tight little man-cub, rest in peace... sleep... sleep... Mowgli: Ba... Bagheera? [chokes] Bagheera: Now, it's no use arguing anymore. No more talk until morning. Kaa: [laughs] He...
