I'm in my apartment in trendy Tribeca. I've been down here for 37 years, from before it was a fashionable neighbourhood. It's a wonderful place; it looks over the Hudson River. I can see 30 miles into New Jersey. My landlord would like me to die beca...
It means that your birth, with all your particulars, is a wildly improbable event, and hence precious. You won the sweepstakes by being born at all. Think of all the wallflower sperm and egg cells. You made it, buddy. Whew! What a staggering wonder! ...
The Romans always wanted bread and circuses-food and entertainement! As we destroy their city, I will offer them both. Behold, a sample!" Someething dropped from the ceiling and landed at Percy's feet: a loaf of sandwich bread in a white plastic wrap...
I thought that my voyage had come to its end at the last limit of my power, that the path before me was closed, that provisions were exhausted, and the time come to take shelter in a silent obscurity, but I find that thy will knows no end in me, and ...
And at 3am you sit near the window and wonder if there is magic... because all you need are some fairies to take your pain away and help you sleep... you take a book to read... you take a pen and a paper to write...you cling on some music that might ...
Evolution is a blind giant who rolls a snowball down a hill. The ball is made of flakes—circumstances. They contribute to the mass without knowing it. They adhere without intention, and without foreseeing what is to result. When they see the result...
Chances are, when you were young, you were told, in effect, "Listen, kid, here is the news: life is not about you. Life is not about what you want. What you want is not important. Life is about doing what others expect of you." If you accepted this i...
The best thing about writing fiction is that moment where the story catches fire and comes to life on the page, and suddenly it all makes sense and you know what it’s about and why you’re doing it and what these people are saying and doing, and y...
I hope you will have a wonderful year, that you'll dream dangerously and outrageously, that you'll make something that didn't exist before you made it, that you will be loved and that you will be liked, and that you will have people to love and to li...
I wonder if it is possible to have two boyfriends. I mean, times are changing. Relationships are more complicated. In France men always have mistresses and wives and so on. Henri probably has two girlfriends. He would laugh if you told him you just h...
Freedom is a state of mind, I said wondering where I'd heard it before, not a state of being. We are all slaves to gravity and morality and the vicissitudes of nature. Our genes govern us much more than we'd like to think. Our bodies can not know abs...
I think you're the kind of man a girl can count on. You just can't let go of losing your family. You can't let yourself love because you think your heart can't handle it . . . that something bad will happen. But you're wrong. It's true . . . grief is...
Our mind cannot be without fear and our head cannot be held high when we become slaves to materialistic values , always wondering why my car is not bigger and better than my neighbours car and in that process forget our human values like dignity, hum...
Isn't it interesting that in Acts 11, at the end of verse 26, it says, "The disciples were called Christians first at Antioch." What I find interesting is the simple thought that the Christians didn't name themselves. But rather, they were called (or...
It is one thing to accept something intellectually, but to accept the same thing emotionally is an entirely different matter. The one thing psychiatry cannot fill is man's inherent need for emotionalizing through dogma. Man needs ceremony and ritual,...
Being reveals itself in all its beauty, splendor, and mystery “to him who contemplates it reverently.” ... What's the most beautiful part of the world, the part that has the greatest dignity? It’s not really a part but a person – it’s every...
She really was pretty, for a grown-up person, but when you are seven, beauty is an abstraction, not an imperative. I wonder what I would have done if she had smiled at me like that now: whether I would have handed my mind or my heart or my identify t...
In your thirties something strange starts to happen. It’s a mere hiccup at first, an instant of hesitation. How old are you? Oh, I’m — you start confidently, but then you stop. You were going to say thirty-three, but you’re not. You’re thir...
The Bible is big in my teaching. It's a wonder the ACLU didn't get after me pretty good. I really kept thinking they would. I took my boys to church. I took my football team to church. I only did it two times a year. Before I signed a kid, I'd write ...
I remember working with Ray Charles when I was quite young, and I would wonder, 'Why would he sing 'Georgia On My Mind' and 'I Can't Stop Loving You' every night?' I said, 'Oh my God if I have to sing these songs, if I have to sing 'I Can't Stop Lovi...
If I had all the filmmakers that traumatized me when I was a little kid in this room, all I would say is, 'Thank you,' because they've made me who I am. As much as I say 'trauma,' it all comes from a place of love. The fact that I am feeling emotions...
