The writing of novels is one of the few ways I have found to approach the altar of God and Creation itself. You try to worship God by performing the singularly courageous and impossible favor of knowing yourself.

I will always find myself a prisoner to the divine sublimity of the Eucharist itself. (201).

The wing of a fly is proof enough of the existence of God for me.

Every athlete learns by theft and mimicry.

I learned that if I could read, I could cook. I surprised myself I like it.

I was born to be a point guard, but not a very good one.

Through sports a coach can offer a boy a secret way to sneak up on the mystery that is manhood.

When mom and dad went to war the only prisoners they took were the children.

A novel is a great act of passion and intellect, carpentry and largess. From the very beginning, I wrote to explain my own life to myself, and I invited readers who chose to make the journey with me to join me on the high wire.

Paranoia has a sharper taste if the danger is real.

I told my kids when they were little, 'Look, kids, your mother and I are screwing you up somehow. We don't understand how, or we wouldn't do it. But we're parents. So somehow we're damaging you, and I want you to know that early. So just ignore me when I go to that part of my parenting.'

Chad seemed both venomous and insecure, a flammable combination.

My wound is geography. It is also my anchorage, my port of call.

Wasn't Atlanta the murder capital of the U.S. last year? Yes, but the airport's perfectly safe.

Some things don't mix. Some things don't mix at all, but sometimes in life you have to take the risk.

I cannot express how lordly and transfigured I felt at that moment. I was a prince of that harbor, a porpoise king -- slim among the buoys and the water traffic.

Humanity is best described as inhumanity.

The choices I didn't make are almost as ruinous as the ones I did.

Fear is the major cargo that American writers must stow away when the writing life calls them into carefully chosen ranks.

Each divorce is the death of a small civilization.