Although the point of blogging is that it doesn't pay, I often steal from my blog for paid publication. I've based several magazine essays on blog posts, as well as an entire book.

Friendship is a strange animal. It only thrives in voluntary enjoyment of each other's company, in the pleasure of nonobligatory connection. I repeat: You owe me nothing.

Thank God for my hobgoblin, small-minded consistency.

I've always subscribed to the notion that a writer always has something else to say, and the more you write, the more you have to write about, because the act of writing is self-generating.

Sometimes I think of blogging as finger exercises for a violinist; sometimes I think of it as mulching a garden. It is incredibly useful and helpful to my "real" writing.

Another benefit is that the more I blog, the more I maintain and develop a first-person voice, which translates into a much greater ease with writing personal essays.

Turning the blog into a book was extremely difficult, a tremendous amount of sustained, hard work. Blogging is easy; writing a book is difficult.

Let nothing human be foreign to me

Everything that has ever happened to me is still all with me.

It happened every single day in Brooklyn: awaken to fresh glory, fall asleep to blight and ruin.

Country ham is baked whole, usually with a glaze, sometimes studded with cloves, and served as the centerpiece of Christmas and Easter feasts.

If you want to know who we are, who America is, how we respond to evil-that's it: selflessly, compassionately, unafraid.

Great Britain would spend her last guinea to keep a navy superior to that of the United States or any other power.

God speaks through me.

If you once understand an author's character, the comprehension of his writings becomes easy.

If I'm halfway to the dream, at best, half of my resources are there. Your resources to fulfill the dream will come during the last step of the dream.

I wear black diamonds instead of regular ones because I’m not flashy, just flossssy.

I didn't always have friends so I am careful to take care of them.

Who mentioned the Church? On the contrary, I have great respect for religion. My objection is to those who are against so many things and for so little.

Never forget to dream.

I knew I became a professional when I stop paying attention to what time it was.