One of the problems with defending free speech is you often have to defend people that you find to be outrageous and unpleasant and disgusting.
By things so achingly small are lives measured and marred.
Writing is never, ever easy but I wake up every morning grateful for the gift of being able to do this.
As many have noted, the peril for authors is that our work space is too easily our play space.
When I was 18 years old, in a more innocent time, my first backpacking trip through Europe, I sneaked into the Temple of Saturn in the Roman Forum after nightfall and spent several hours in there avoiding the guards patrolling.
I have always argued, in a good novel, interesting things happen to interesting people.
Irritation for some men was their response to strain.
To get the truth, you want to get your own heart to pound while you write.
Being a leader doesn't mean you created something or you did something great in the past or some other person has given you any kind of authority.
Even the proudest spirit can be broken with love.
The Church, during the apostolic age, did not consist of isolated, independent congregations, but was one body, of which the separate churches were constituent members, each subject to all the rest, or to an authority which extended over all.