Early publication can be a dubious blessing: we all know writers who would give anything not to have published their first book, and go about trying to buy up all existing copies.

Memory blurs, that's the point. If memory didn't blur you wouldn't have the fool's courage to do things again, again, again, that tear you apart.

Reading is the sole means by which we slip, involuntarily, often helplessly, into another's skin, another's voice, another's soul.

I never change, I simply become more myself.

How lovely this world is, really: one simply has to look.

Our enemy is by tradition our savior, in preventing us from superficiality.

Read widely, and without apology. Read what you want to read, not what someone tells you you should read.

Night comes to the desert all at once, as if someone turned off the light.

Keep a light, hopeful heart. But ­expect the worst.

See, people come into your life for a reason. They might not know it themselves, why. You might not know it. But there's a reason. There has to be

Be your own editor/critic. Sympathetic but merciless!

I don’t think I’ve ever seen anything as beautiful as you.

The overdressed traveler betrays more interest in being seen than in seeing, while the true traveler knows that the novel world about her serves as the most appropriate accessory.

on him, under him, with his mouth pressed to hers, he sang to her uncouth songs that moved through her body.

Optimism unaccompanied by personal effort is merely a state of mind and not fruitful.

The Bible was written in tears, and to tears it yields its best treasures.

The real reason women fall in love abroad is not that they are free of domestic inhibitions but that they translate their love of stone and place into love of flesh. ... Is this true?

There's no such thing as a lost cause.

Nobody can make you a loser.

Don't ever wish you were someone else, you were meant to be the way you are exactly.

Your soul is boundlessly impassioned and always prepared to impart to you whatever you need to thrive.