Divorce, she could see, would be like marriage - a power grab, as in who would be the dog, and who would be the owner of the dog.

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.

The most reliable method for acquiring wealth is through giving.

Remember to be gentle with yourself and others. We are all children of chance and none can say why some fields will blossom while others lay brown beneath the August sun.

When you are offended at any man's fault, turn to yourself and study your own failings. Then you will forget your anger.

And then a great thing in my life was going to India.

In all pursuits men complain of failure when they have not attained the measure of success they proposed to themselves.

Let me be a little kinder, Let me be a little blinder to the faults of those around me.

Every movie I do is challenging for me. There is some element of imaginative that you wouldn't have in a typical movie.

Gratitude is what opens the spiritual doors to all the blessings. Everything becomes clear, you see, you feel, you live.

there's not a boy on the planet worth this amount of angst. I know; i used to be one