I am usually protective of my work, not showing it to anyone until it has been redrafted and polished.

I dislike pastiche; it attracts attention to the language only.

It is the absence of facts that frightens people: the gap you open, into which they pour their fears, fantasies, desires.

Write a book you'd like to read. If you wouldn't read it, why would anybody else? Don't write for a perceived audience or market. It may well have vanished by the time your book's ready.

Fortitude. ... It means fixity of purpose. It means endurance. It means having the strength to live with what constrains you.

Feminism hasn't failed, it's just never been tried.

Truth can break the gates down, truth can howl in the street; unless truth is pleasing, personable and easy to like, she is condemned to stay whimpering at the back door.

If you have a good story idea, don't assume it must form a prose narrative. It may work better as a play, a screenplay or a poem. Be flexible.

The things you think are the disasters in your life are not the disasters really. Almost anything can be turned around: out of every ditch, a path, if you can only see it.

I didn't cry much after I was 35, but staggered stony-faced into middle age, a handkerchief still in my bag just in case.

You're only young once, they say, but doesn't it go on for a long time? More years than you can bear.

If you dwell in the darkness, you can see in the dark and look into the light. But in choosing the darkness, you know you are destined to walk alone.

She let herself fall backwards into the music, and it was like falling in a dream, without fear.It was like being a raindrop falling into the ocean that had started you.

If the Republicans will stop telling lies about the Democrats, we will stop telling the truth about them.

I always remind my kids that hard work pays off. They see that I take nothing for granted in life. It helps them stay grounded.

Guns don't kill people; people kill people. Of course, people with guns kill more people. But that's only natural. It's hard. But it's fair.

The difference between burlesque and the newspapers is that the former never pretended to be performing a public service by exposure.

I love putting things together. I love putting together a team and making stuff with people. It's great, that's what's cool about movies it's such a collaborative effort.

Everything in life has its price.

Beautiful and fresh, Girl Saves Boy is full of the absolute truth-life is complicated. I could not put it down.

Prayer is like money - it has no smell.