You can browse to your heart’s content but it’s hard work and not easy on the feet unless you do it through catalogs or the Internet, and I like to touch and try on the...

Language is an archaeological vehicle… the language we speak is a whole palimpsest of human effort and history.

Our soulmate is the one who makes life come to life.

I don’t want to write formula. I don’t want to crank these books out like sausages. Every book is different, which takes a hell of a lot of ingenuity on my part.

Nothing is as real as a dream. The world can change around you, but your dream will not. Responsibilities need not erase it. Duties need not obscure it. Because the dream is within you, no...

Money costs too much.

Look at everything as though you were seeing it either for the first or last time.

My own funeral, I’d like to be laid out in a coffin in my own house. I would like my coffin to be put in the double parlor, and I would like all the flowers...

I didn’t really choose to write; I more or less fell into it.

The race of children possesses magically sagacious powers.

In Jewish history there are no coincidences.

Childhood smells of perfume and brownies.

The theater of the mind is impossible to compete with, and I like the idea that with a few suggestions, each reader forms in his or her own mind what a character or a place...

I think the sport of wrestling, which I became involved with at the age of 14… I competed until I was 34, kind of old for a contact sport. I coached the sport until I...

I think living the blessed life is the luck of the draw.

You define a good flight by negatives: you didn’t get hijacked, you didn’t crash, you didn’t throw up, you weren’t late, you weren’t nauseated by the food. So you are grateful.

Loneliness is and always has been the central and inevitable experience of every man.

Here is a test to find whether your mission on Earth is finished: If you’re alive, it isn’t.

The character of Rosie is based on a woman who used to live in the same apartment building I lived in many years ago. She’s taken on a life of her own, of course.

Life is about learning; when you stop learning, you die.

We’re frightened of what makes us different.

Writers, as they gain success, feel like outsiders because writers don’t come together in real groups.

I’m too shy for personal appearances, and I’ve found out that anytime I talk about my writing, I can’t do any writing for many weeks afterward.

Nothing in life is so hard that you can’t make it easier by the way you take it.

The really great writers are people like Emily Bronte who sit in a room and write out of their limited experience and unlimited imagination.

While it is well enough to leave footprints on the sands of time, it is even more important to make sure they point in a commendable direction.

Books that do a tenth of what Left Behind has done are smashing successes.

I was a Navy officer writing about Navy problems and I simply stole this lovely Army nurse and popped her into a Navy uniform, where she has done very well for herself.

Our house is made of glass… and our lives are made of glass; and there is nothing we can do to protect ourselves.

I taught more school, had two more sons and then in 1970 I wrote a short story and sent it to a national contest, where I won 60th prize out of 100.

Life is extremely complicated. I try as best I can to enter the realm of nuances of human behavior and alternatives of that behavior.

I want to be very close to someone I respect and admire and have somebody who feels the same way about me.

Power doesn’t corrupt people, people corrupt power.

Never ask what sort of computer a guy drives. If he’s a Mac user, he’ll tell you. If not, why embarrass him?

I do not read the ancient languages, but I am beginning to study Greek.

People always call it luck when you’ve acted more sensibly than they have.

Time, in general, has always been a central obsession of mine – what it does to people, how it can constitute a plot all on its own. So naturally, I am interested in old age.

I decided to devote my life to telling the story because I felt that having survived I owe something to the dead. and anyone who does not remember betrays them again.

The New York Quarterly is an amazing, intelligent, crazy, creative, strange, and indispensable magazine.

I’ve written enough books with real celebrities, such as Walter Payton and Hank Aaron and Billy Graham, to know that fame looks good only to people who don’t have it.

Your memory is a monster; you forget – it doesn’t. It simply files things away. It keeps things for you, or hides things from you – and summons them to your recall with a will...

Where we come from in America no longer signifies. It’s where we go, and what we do when we get there, that tells us who we are.

Knowledge is power. Your education is the most important thing you can do.

Explorers have to be ready to die lost.

If it’s never our fault, we can’t take responsibility for it. If we can’t take responsibility for it, we’ll always be its victim.

I focus on the writing and let the rest of the process take care of itself. I’ve learned to trust my own instincts and I’ve also learned to take risks.

I’ve made up stuff that’s turned out to be real, that’s the spooky part.

Life is a great surprise. I don’t see why death should not be an even greater one.

Nine out of 10 war victims die from a gun.

Obsession led me to write. It’s been that way with every book I’ve ever written. I become completely consumed by a theme, by characters, by a desire to meet a challenge.