I loved Gore Vidal's Burr. That book gave me courage.

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.

Medical research is needed, and I just saw there was a need for help that the government - state or federal - was not spending the taxpayers' money on helping people get through college.

Design must be functional, and functionality must be translated into visual aesthetics without any reliance on gimmicks that have to be explained.

To have faith in the Word, Scripture must not grasp us in our critical thought, but in the life of the soul.

When you can see the end of things even in their beginnings, there's no more hope, unless you want to pretend, or forget, or get drunk or something.

The world is proof that God is a committee.

You're not useful to me until you've made three momentous mistakes.

Nonsense is nonsense even when spoken by world-famous scientists.

The state would rather give me an uzi than a microphone.

Every single band in the world has these gigantic songs that people are obsessed with.

Knowing when to speak up and when to shut up will get you very far not only in business, but in life.