I don't call you handsome, sir, though I love you most dearly: far too dearly to flatter you. Don't flatter me.

Life appears to me too short to be spent in nursing animosity, or registering wrongs.

The idea of seeing the sea - of being near it - watching its changes by sunrise, sunset, moonlight, and noonday - in calm, perhaps in storm - fills and satisfies my mind.

A ruffled mind makes a restless pillow.

Oh madam, when you put bread and cheese, instead of burnt porridge, into these children's mouths, you may indeed feed their vile bodies, but you little think how you starve their immortal souls!

Good-night, my-" He stopped, bit his lip, and abruptly left me.

I am no bird; and no net ensnares me; I am a free human being with an independent will.

The human heart has hidden treasures, In secret kept, in silence sealed; The thoughts, the hopes, the dreams, the pleasures, Whose charms were broken if revealed.

Better to be without logic than without feeling.

God did not give me my life to throw it away.

What you want to ignite in others must first burn inside yourself.

You need to characterize beauty by association.

Don’t waste your most important resource—your life.

I like a composer called Henry Purcell, and I love to listen to Neil Young.

Kangoroos can't hop backwards.

I think people respond to me as a down-to-Earth, girl-next-door person, because I am one of those people. That's something I don't have to act very hard at.

pretty please, with a cherry on top of me!

Psychos and megalomaniacs are my forte, remember? They all wanna hang with me

One didn't issue instructions to comets. Grown children did what they had to do, and parents could only grit their teeth and watch and pray for them to get through it.

I am not thinking that because people say I am great that I really am great. I am just doing a job, just like everybody else. The only difference is that a lot more people see what I do.

I don't have a schedule, but I can write for hours non-stop. If I'm drafting a book, I try and do a chapter a day. I dislike first drafts. Revision is a lot more fun, but it takes years.