I don't think virtue has a downside. I think human nature does.

When you write, you're supposed to go stand somewhere else for a while, see things from a perspective that's not in line with your own reflexive truths.

I've always hated quotation marks: they're ugly on the page and they classify the text for you, putting dialogue in one box and narration in another.

I have to trick myself into writing a story - impose some arbitrary constraint to distract me from the constraints of my past habits or my fear that I don't have much to say.

I think it's very hard to be sexually explicit and erotic - though there are writers, like K. M. Soehnlein, who are just brilliant at this.

If you cross-section anyone's life from one angle and then another, what constitutes goodness looks different each time. It's not an absolute.

You have to be able to play: this is spontaneous interaction, and it flexes all the creative muscles you need as a writer. And empathy is one of those muscles.

I'm saying I'm in love with you! I've been in love with you this whole bleeding year!

Women have no appreciation of good looks-at least, good women have not.

There are only two things in life, ' Bergé said. 'Love and beauty.

Art, its completeness, its formedness, its finishedness, had no power to console. Words, on the other hand, were a lifeline.

Virtue is health vice is sickness.

Do not weep do not wax indignant. Understand.

How lovely it is to dream while you are awake.

We seem to spend a lot of our time in very small spaces spouting a lot of dialogue very quickly.

I won't admit or deny anything...makes me more interesting.

The audience can feel the subtleties of the characters.