“By remaining constrained in one's environment or country or family, one has little chance of being other than the original prescription. By leaving, one gains a perspective, a distance of both space and time, which is essential for writing about family or home, in any case.”

“When two members of a family or two intimate friends are separated, and one goes abroad and one remains at home, the return of the relative or friend who has been travelling always seems to place the relative or friend who has been staying at home at a painful disadvantage when the two first meet. The sudden encounter of the new thoughts and new habits eagerly gained in the one case, with the old thoughts and old habits passively preserved in the other, seems at first to part the sympathies of the most loving relatives and the fondest friends, and to set a sudden strangeness, unexpected by both and uncontrollable by both, between them on either side.”

“Your salvation would be hollow if you don't help each other come home. Remember we are family, and families leave no one behind.”

“A dysfunctional family is any family with more than one person in it.”

“Writing is one of the few careers for which you essentially train yourself, the other two major ones being juggling and pickpocketing.”

“We can change the world one thought at a time, one child at a time, one family at a time, one community at a time, one city, one state and one country at a time.”