“The privilege is not writing a novel, it's to have someone read it. When you look at it that way, you realize the responsibility you have to put your very best on the page.”

“If you want your life to be a magnificent storyThen begin by realizing that you are the authorAnd everyday you have the opportunity to write a new page”

“Child, unless you are opening a dictionary, you start at the book's opening page and you read the story through. If it's terribly dreadful, then just put it down and move on. What I will not tolerate is reading ahead. It's not fair to the reader or to the author. If they meant to have their books read backwards, they would surely have written them that way!”

“Because when you're posed, you know someone's watching. You put on your very best smile. You let your sweetest personality shine.”

“A person is like a novel: Up to the very last page you don't know how it's going to end. Otherwise, there'd be no point in reading...”

“Responsibility I believe accrues through privilege. People like you and me have an unbelievable amount of privilege and therefore we have a huge amount of responsibility. We live in free societies where we are not afraid of the police; we have extraordinary wealth available to us by global standards. If you have those things, then you have the kind of responsibility that a person does not have if he or she is slaving seventy hours a week to put food on the table; a responsibility at the very least to inform yourself about power. Beyond that, it is a question of whether you believe in moral certainties or not.”