Here's a secret. Many novelists, if they are pressed and if they are being honest, will admit that the finished book is a rather rough translation of the book they'd intended to write.

You cannot find peace by avoiding life.

She could have had a life as potent and dangerous as literature itself.

The secret of flight is this -- you have to do it immediately, before your body realizes it is defying the laws.

There is a beauty in the world, though it's harsher than we expect it to be.

we become the stories we tell ourselves

I was not ladylike, nor was I manly. I was something else altogether. There were so many different ways to be beautiful.

Language in fiction is made up of equal parts meaning and music. The sentences should have rhythm and cadence, they should engage and delight the inner ear.

I suspect any serious reader has a first great book, just the way anybody has a first kiss.

One always has a better book in one's mind than one can manage to get onto paper.

Take me with you. I want a doomed love. I want streets at night, wind and rain, no one wondering where I am.

Anything is better than stagnation.

There is no amount of bad karma that can compete with a contrite spirit and God's forgiveness.

At 17, the gratitude part of their brain is a little undercooked.

I've been a ballerina since I was two, but I've always wanted to be an actress.

We will make America strong again. We will make America safe again. And we will make America great again, greater than ever before.

I hereby accuse the North American empire of being the biggest menace to our planet.

You don't have to be crazy to be a writer, but it certainly does help

Curvy is something to be proud of.

To fall in love with yourself is the first secret of happiness. Then if you're not a good mixer you can always fall back on your own company.

This was our common ground, the secret we shared but never spoke aloud. I should have been with him; she should have left him alone. Shoulda, coulda, woulda. It's so easy in the past tense.