Fiction and poetry are my first loves, but the really beautiful lyrical essay can do so much that other forms cannot.

What I've come to learn is that the world is never saved in grand messianic gestures, but in the simple accumulation of gentle, soft, almost invisible acts of compassion.

You know, you can steel your heart against any kind of trouble, any kind of horror. But the simple act of kindness from a complete stranger will unstitch you.

In this time of the Internet and nonfiction, to be on an actual bookshelf in an actual bookstore is exciting in itself.

What we know about who we are comes from stories. It's the agents of our imagination who really shape who we are.

The privilege of being a writer is that you have this opportunity to slow down and to consider things.

People think that writing is writing, but actually writing is editing. Otherwise, you're just taking notes

My friend Ronald Gottesman says...that the cause of all our trouble is the belief in an essential, pure identity: religious, ethnic, historical, ideological.

You can count on Scandinavian literature for a certain kind of darkness, a modern mythic style.

Men do communicate, often very directly, but women sometimes cannot accept how simple what we have to say is. We seldom play games--we aren't that sophisticated.

Before you speak, my friend, remember, a spiritual man contain his anger. Angry words are like slap in de face.

Sitting alone...where we usually used to sit...n looking behind those memories, we enjoyed together.....

If a woman gets insomnia, you never know where you're going to find her furniture the next morning. It's primal. We have so little we can control, but we can perfect the way our room looks.

I like generals. I like Napoleon. I like strategy. The majority of them are praised for mass destruction, but it's exciting to see how it comes to the mind mentally.

In my heart, I know I'm just as talented as some of my idols.

The only really weird part for me was making sense of the person on the TV at the same time as the person who I am friendly with and do something so friend-intimate with as text.

Border relations between Canada and Mexico have never been better.

Without imagination, nothing is dangerous.

Superwoman is the adversary of the women's movement.

Fortune is not only blind herself, but blinds the people she has embraced.

It is by virtue of the atonement that God can maintain His justice and yet demonstrate His mercy.