I like writing dialogue - I can hear my characters so clearly that writing dialogue often feels as much like transcribing something as it does like creating it.

Some people need God and some people need science.

The worst thing that's ever happened to you is not the worst thing that's ever happened to anybody.

I hate the word juicy in describing anything: lips, plots, oranges. But especially novels. It feels - icky. Reminds me of saliva.

I wish I were better at straightforward description. I feel like I'm usually overdoing it or underdoing it, and it takes a lot of tweaking to get the details right.

When wealth flees, untrue friends follow.

He is really not so ugly after all, provided, of course, that one shuts one's eyes, and does not look at him.

It was too lonely to be heaven, and there wouldn't be stars in hell.

The body is not a product. It is an experience.

We may have been like needles in a hay stack, but they were like needles . . . in a stack of needles

Congress is a Mafia running a protection racket.. .

The ordinary true, or purely real, cannot be the object of the arts. Illusion on a ground of truth,--that is the secret of the fine arts.

My husband gave me a necklace. It's fake. I requested fake. Maybe I'm paranoid, but in this day and age, I don't want something around my neck that's worth more than my head.

Sometimes I cheat and buy things I used to make from scratch and just doctor them up.

I've used drugs that I do consider to be dangerous, drugs that are potentially detrimental to kids and society at large.