I feel like it has gone very fast for me, but I feel like it wasn't instantaneous, at all. I was getting a lot of rejections. I just got very lucky and it happened quickly for me. I don't feel like I'm a prodigy or something.

I guess whatever maturity is there may be there because I've been keeping a journal forever. In high school my friends would make fun of me - you're doing your man diary again. So I was always trying to translate experience into words.

It wasn't until I was 26 or 25 when I started sending work out to magazines.

I feel like it has gone very fast for me, but I feel like it wasn't instantaneous, at all. I was getting a lot of rejections. I just got very lucky and it happened quickly for me. I don't feel like I'm a prodigy or something.

I never played inside as a kid - even in the rain I'd go out.

I've been getting into Nick Drake lately, the folk singer. Sad, gorgeous stuff.

I do fish. I think there is a connection between thinking and fishing mostly because you spend a lot of time up to your waist in water without a whole lot to keep your mind busy.

I always told my dad I'd play professional football.

I guess you could say I've been writing all my life.

Travel definitely affects me as a writer.

I write reviews of science books for the Boston Globe, so I like to give science books.

You don't say, I'm going to be a writer when I grow up - at least I didn't.

My sister-in-law is a painter, and I'll say, how long did it take you to paint that painting. She'll say, It took me maybe three days, but it took me all my life to get the skills to paint that painting.

For me it was perfect, because it wasn't a very competitive environment, and it was a studio program. They basically send you off, and say, bring us some work, and we'll help you improve it. It really rewarded self-discipline.

Short stories are wonderful and extremely challenging, and the joy of them, because it only takes me three or four months to write, I can take more risks with them. It's just less of your life invested.

But then of course you reach a point where you have to say, I've got to figure out how this book's going to end. Otherwise, you're going to write yourself into so many dead-ends.

It took me about three years to write About Grace. I wasn't teaching two of those years, so I was working eight-hour days, five days a week. And it would include research and reading - it wasn't just a blank page, laying down words.

Anyone who has spent a few nights in a tent during a storm can tell you: The world doesn't care all that much if you live or die.

I found my first novel difficult. I don't want to make it sound like it's any more difficult than driving a cab or going to any other job, but there are so many opportunities for self-doubt, that you just kind of need to soldier on.

That something so small could be so beautiful. Worth so much. Only the strongest people can turn away from feelings like that.

Being a mother is complicated because it's not just a paternal culture making demands on you; it's those internal demands and expectations that women have and are self-generated.

It is hard to describe the thrill of creative joy which the artist feels when the conviction seizes her that at last she has caught the very soul of the character she wishes to portray, in the music and action which reveal it.

Trials are the soil in which faith flourishes.

A lot of filmmakers hate testing movies. I love it because it's an audience medium. The biggest problem has been the prevalence of all these Internet sites. It's almost impossible to have a test screening without it leaking out on the Internet.

Sometimes an actor will stumble on the joke, and I'm right on them. Back it up before the audience hears the bad version of the joke, because humor is 90% surprise. If they know what's coming, they won't laugh as hard.

Men are much more agressive with their advances.

I think the tiniest little thing can change the course of your day, which can change the course of your year, which can change who you are.

Perjury is the basest and meanest and most cowardly of crimes. What can it do? Perjury can change the common air that we breathe into the axe of an executioner.

I ran into Ellen at a photo shoot. She took my breath away. That had never happened to me in my life.

I think it's weird that the news cedes so much ground to Wikipedia. That isn't true in other informational sectors.

As I said last week in the wake of the grand jury decision, I think Ferguson laid bare a problem that is not unique to St. Louis or that area, and is not unique to our time, and that is a simmering distrust that exists between too many police departments and too many communities of color.

We have fought this fight as long, and as well as we know how. We have been defeated. For us as a Christian people, there is now but one course to pursue. We must accept the situation.

My friends used to tease me 'cause I'd wear a CamelBak while I was working so I wouldn't have to get up if I was thirsty.

Our liberty depends on the freedom of the press and that cannot be limited without being lost.

To be a great actor, you really don't need to go to acting school or learn dance classes or work on your body. You have to be intelligent. You have to draw on a lot of emotions that you go through in life that you can tap into once you work on a set.

The search for truth is not a trade by which a man can support himself; for a priest it is a supreme peril .

I only unwind at facials and massages.

Charm is a cunning self forgetfulness.

I'm proud of what I've done in Jordan, but the region itself is sitting on a time bomb.

Do you think I really care what Jeff Gordon says?

Trips to the dentist - I like to postpone that kind of thing.

I don't think we've got much of a chance to tell you the truth. But our main problem is our audience skews a little older than most shows, and I don't think our people can stay up that late. I certainly can't.

If you've got a camera, go to a war zone and tell a story.

When a book is going well, it tells you where to go.