Before publication, and if provided by persons whose judgment you trust, yes, of course criticism helps. But after something is published, all I want to read or hear is praise.

She is pure Alice in Wonderland, and her appearance and demeanor are a nicely judged mix of the Red Queen and a Flamingo.

Failure is the condiment that gives success its flavor.

A conversation is a dialogue, not a monologue. That's why there are so few good conversations: due to scarcity, two intelligent talkers seldom meet.

I believe more in the scissors than I do in the pencil.

The wind is us-- it gathers and remembers all our voices, then sends them talking and telling through the leaves and the fields.

Anyone who ever gave you confidence, you owe them a lot.

I love New York, even though it isn't mine, the way something has to be, a tree or a street or a house, something, anyway, that belongs to me because I belong to it.

When you've got nowhere to turn, turn on the gas.

Well, I'm about as tall as a shotgun, and just as noisy.

A man who doesn't dream is like a man who doesn't sweat. He stores up a lot of poison.

Media has the ability to make good seem evil and evil seem good.

Humility is the freedom to stop trying to be what we're not, or pretending to be what we're not, and accepting our 'appropriate smallness.

Our greatest opportunities are to let go and surrender to that which is greater than our egoistic needs and desires.

My cousin Francis and I are in perfect accord - he wants Milan, and so do I.

The desert shall rejoice, and blossom as the rose.

Southcliffe is an anthem to ordinary peoples ability to reinvent themselves in the face of ultimate darkness.

I didn't write poems for a number of years after graduate school because the criticisms of other students in the workshops wouldn't quiet down in my mind when I tried to work.

Test cricket is bloody hard work, especially when you've got Sachin batting with what looks like a three metre wide bat.

If you want to dig, if you want to pry, do it on your time, but I'm going to be a woman of dignity.

We allow words to obscure the interpretation of the deeper meaning.