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.

Death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it. And that is as it should be because death is very likely the single best invention of life. It is life's change agent, it clears out the old to make way for the new.

We also thought of ourselves in racial and largely ethnic terms.

At first, I was just trying to sound like DOOM and Eminem, and then I dug out my own voice, I guess.

Its not about having a specific set time both personal and professional lives are 247. Its simply more about making the right allocation to each one and recognizing that its going to be different every single day.

For sure, all over Poland, kids had my picture of a lemur on their bedroom wall - but the chances are they may never get to see a real lemur in Madagascar. I thought this was great and it really meant a lot to me.

When I saw the movie, I said, I wish I had heard the music. I would have ridden the horse differently.

You must expect great things of yourself before you can do them.

It doesnt matter how long my hair is or what colour my skin is or whether Im a woman or a man.

I believe it's important that Hong Kong does not become another Chinese city.

Sporting events like the Olympics have developed and maintained a clear message of promoting gender equality as an essential criterion in the success of any international event.

Teaching is the one profession that creates all other professions.

One of the interesting things about Twitter is looking how famous people choose to use it. Take someone like Steve Martin, who I follow: it's all sorts of comic gems, nothing private, nothing personal - all jokes. Other celebrities are overtly personal - like Charlie Sheen. I do a mix of observations and updates.

I'm not a gamer. I've never played any games. I was more a books and games outdoors kind of a person, so I was extremely daunted when I got this job knowing the size of the fan base and the commitment of the fans to 'Halo.'

What I am sad about is that there is now, in America, no equivalent to the art circuit.

When I write fiction, I never try to deliver a message; I just want to tell a story. But I admit that I want the story to be memorable and the characters to touch the reader's heart.

What would the world be, once bereft Of wet and wildness? Let them be left, O let them be left, wildness and wet, Long live the weeds and the wildness yet.

Martial arts is a life journey. One of the things my teacher taught me a long time ago was that everyone's path to the mastery of a certain system is different. Some people's path is a very direct route, where others might wind back and forth if you are injured or something.

Looking for love is tricky business, like whipping a carousel horse.

Adoption is not the call to have the perfect, rosy family. It is the call to give love, mercy, and patience.

Now, if we look at the way in which the labor movement itself has evolved over the last couple of decades, we see increasing numbers of black people who are in the leadership of the labor movement and this is true today.

I've done romantic comedy, and I don't get to flex that muscle often.

As an actor, I'm familiar with having bursts of energy, where you're giving things a try, and then you have down time.

I sought my soul but my soul I could not see. I sought my God but my God eluded me. I sought my brother and I found all three

We have a tendency to put ourselves last, we concentrate on everything else; work, friends, family, home issues, but we ignore the deeper stuff until it becomes so compressed that it can explode.