Charles Dickens was an avid seeker of names - he read directories and looked for odd names on gravestones.

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.

A real businessman value his partners like friends and his partnership like friendship.

Perhaps some day I'll crawl back home, beaten, defeated. But not as long as I can make stories out of my heartbreak, beauty out of sorrow.

Luckily, I's learned at an early age that self-preservation was the only way to survive with your soul intact.

This is a very violent place to live, the Earth, and we're a very violent species. Cain is still killing Abel. We see that every day.

Woman is the most moral element in all humanity.

In painting, you have unlimited power. You have the ability to move mountains. You can bend rivers. But when i get home the only thing i have power over is the garbage.

Friends that you have known for a long time and love very dearly never seem to grow old.

I'm going to be the president of a safe country. We have enough problems.

Never to read another book that was born and baptized (with ink) at the same time.

The shreiking fight or the out-of-character insult endures forever, while the daily sweetness dissolves like sugar in water.