Funny how you dig yourself into a hole by the teaspoon.

A lot of people get so hung up on what they can't have that they don't think for a second about whether they really want it.

You can call it innocence, or you can call it gullibility, but Celia made the most common mistake of the good-hearted: she assumed that everyone else was just like her.

My own apathy is bone chilling.

In a country that doesn't discriminate between fame and infamy, the latter presents itself as plainly more achievable.

It's far less important to me to be liked these days than to be understood.

But what's so great about being a perfectionist?... You do all this work, and then the stuff you've made just pisses you off.

Giving anyone anything takes courage, since so many presents backfire. A gift conspicuously at odds with your tastes serves only to betray that the benefactor has no earthly clue who you are.

Reading time is precious. Don't waste it. Reading bad books, or books that are wrong for a certain time in your life, can dangerously turn you off the activity altogether.

The Web, the great time-killer that had replaced conspicuously passive television with its seductive illusion of productivity.

Life is never easy so that is why I never lie about my age. I want credit for every damned year.

Seventeen moons, seventeen years, Eyes where Dark or Light appears, Gold for yes and green for no, Seventeen the last to know.

I spend my days trying to remember what only my soul knows but my mind can't comprehend.

Improvise. Write your own damn story.

It's not the hair on your head that matters. It's the kind of hair you have inside.

I like both slapstick and contradiction. Like philosophers.

Every virtue divorced from thankfulness is maimed and limps along the spiritual road.

But Annabeth knew that people saw what they wanted to see. They didn’t need the Mist to warp their perceptions.

There's a bunch of people who sit around and make excuses for themselves and get upset with artists, but you already know what this is - it's an ego-driven business.

There was a point in my 40s when I went into the bathroom with a bottle of wine, locked the door, and said, 'I'm not coming out until I can totally accept the way that I look right now.'

The keys to life are running and reading.