He walked out without his money.The lesson to me was clear: hold onto your integrity at all costs. Never compromise on that.

I believe you can only be lucky if you start out beingvery good

But there was no time to rest on my laurels.

...I did what most kids do when their world feels destroyed. I tried to care less about what remained...It was untrue, of course.

Perhaps she wasn't ill at all in the end, but simply more revealed.

he could transform the barest incident into a thing of curve and contour.

What I'm constantly striving for in my prose is clarity. So that, ideally, the writing will become so transparent that the reader will forget that the medium of communication is language.

Sometimes you need to lie make the world go around

The true battlefield is within.

My back is thick with scars for protesting my freedom.

I think there's something about being a neophyte that's refreshing and hard to duplicate; it brings about real innovation. Innovation usually comes about through blind ignorance.

I placed a jar in Tennessee, And round it was, upon a hill. It made the slovenly wilderness Surround that hill.

As an impoverished student I used to spend days out in Selfridges, nibbling on samples of free cheese and dousing myself with scent in the perfume department.