Better to think of writing, of what one does, as an activity, rather than an identity to keep the calling a verb rather than a noun.

Your numbness is something perhaps you cannot help. It is what the world has done to you. But your coldness. That is what you do to the world.

This is what happened in love. One of you cried a lot and then both of you grew sarcastic.

For love to last, you had to have illusions or have no illusions at all. But you had to stick to one or the other. It was the switching back and forth that endangered things.

Usually she ordered a cup of coffee and a cup of tea, as well as a brownie, propping up her sadness with chocolate and caffeine so that it became an anxiety.

A short story is a love affair, a novel is a marriage. A short story is a photograph; a novel is a film.

One had to build shelters. One had to make pockets and live inside them.

They had, finally, the only thing anyone really wants in life: someone to hold your hand when you die.

The only really good piece of advice I have for my students is, 'Write something you'd never show your mother or father. And you know what they say? I could never do that!'

She was unequal to anyone's wistfulness. She had made too little of her life. Its loneliness shamed her like a crime.

If one publishes, then one is creating a public record of Learning to Write.

As you can see, there are quite a number of things taught in school that one has to unlearn or at least correct.

Though her emotions had not deviated from a jittery frailty she knew that in her own room she could at least attempt sleep and that if she dreamed she might then finally be with Henry.

I believe in the discipline of silence and could talk for hours about it.

I don't want to get pigeonholed just doing just family films and fantasy films... I don't really want to get pigeonholed just doing anything in particular.

The three people who are most often talked about with Hillary Clinton, whether it's Tim Kaine or Vilsack or Cory Booker, they are three extremely nice people.

I'm trying to bring danger back in to rock 'n' roll and there are no limits and no laws and I break down every barrier put in front of me till the day I die.

I am very happy in second-hand bookshops; would a gardener not be happy in a garden?

It is not possible to control the outside of yourself until you have mastered your breathing space. It is not possible to change anything until you understand the substance you wish to change.

I have not made any plans for the future, and my wife would kill me if I announced anything before that.

There are people who are put on this earth to do everything.