I just don't feel much interested in the lifestyles of the rich and famous.

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.

I'm basically one of the best people I know.

If you feel that without a certain person, or position, or achievement, your life would be not worth living, you may be deeper into idolatry than you think.

If we would have God in the closet God must have us out of the closet. There is no way of praying to God but by living to God.

I think poetry's always a kind of faith. It is the kind that I have.

I want to take time to understand life. I want to travel. I want to be a better person, a better Mom. I want to do something good with my life.

There should be no inferiors and no superiors for true world friendship.

An alcoholic is someone you don't like who drinks as much as you do.

The writer I feel the most affinity with - you said you felt my books are 19th century novels, I think they're 18th century novels - is Fielding, Henry Fielding, he's the guy who does it for me.

Theatre is alive and it is now, and then it's gone.

The history of pop is a progression of underground styles going mainstream, so there's nothing unusual about the White Stripes or Franz Ferdinand selling records.