Another thing I learned is that novels, even those from apparently distant times and places, remain current and enlightening, and also comforting.

Oh, that sound? I'm in the hot tub, reading a novel.

Many people, myself among them, feel better at the mere sight of a book.

Every first draft is perfect, because all a first draft has to do is exist.

I suspected that there were things he knew that I had been waiting all my life to learn.

In many ways, being honest about 'Huckleberry Finn' goes right to the heart of whether we can be honest about our heritage and our identity as Americans.

Even if my marriage is falling apart and my children are unhappy, there is still a part of me that says, 'God, this is fascinating!'

Take naps. Often new ideas come together when you are half asleep, but you have to train yourself to remember them.

Candy is my fuel. Ice cream, too.

But what truly horsey girls discover in the end is that boyfriends, husbands, children, and careers are the substitute-for horses

In every society, the artists will be the ones who set themselves up as contrary to whatever the society expects.

These three ladies disliked and distrusted one another as heartily as the First Triumvirate of Rome, and their close alliance was probably for the same reason.

Reword and its an Innovation. Irony

I should at least die as I had lived—fighting.

When I arrived in France aged 20, I marched against the death penalty, which was an unpopular thing to protest against at the time.

Sooner will a camel pass through a needle's eye than a great man be "discovered" by an election.

... As to sleep, you know, I never sleep now. I might be a Watchman, except that I don't get any pay, and he's got nothing on his mind.

Earrings are the same as sneezes: Two is okay, but ten in a row is annoying. If you have two then, God bless you.

Who would name their kid Jack with the last words 'off' at the end of the last name? No wonder that guy is screwed up.

The world is split into two halves: the bacon, and the bacon eaters.

I was the shadow of the waxwing slain/By the false azure in the windowpane.