I'm a natural novelist. I'm interested in the person and the group, and how they mesh. And one of the ways I don't want them to mesh is for the person to be subsumed into the group.

Oh, that sound? I'm in the hot tub, reading a novel.

Many people, myself among them, feel better at the mere sight of a book.

Every first draft is perfect, because all a first draft has to do is exist.

I suspected that there were things he knew that I had been waiting all my life to learn.

In many ways, being honest about 'Huckleberry Finn' goes right to the heart of whether we can be honest about our heritage and our identity as Americans.

Even if my marriage is falling apart and my children are unhappy, there is still a part of me that says, 'God, this is fascinating!'

Take naps. Often new ideas come together when you are half asleep, but you have to train yourself to remember them.

Candy is my fuel. Ice cream, too.

But what truly horsey girls discover in the end is that boyfriends, husbands, children, and careers are the substitute-for horses

In every society, the artists will be the ones who set themselves up as contrary to whatever the society expects.

A revolutionary who is out to defeat his enemies could use their weapons, but not their rules.

Every day is new sacred time to reach for your dreams.

Influence is independent of numbers. Influencing positive change in one person is still influence.

One doesn't have an agreement to that effect written down on parchment and sealed; but it is as well understood and ought to be as faithfully kept as any legal contract.

The only thing major labels can really offer is money.

The gods have sent medicines for the venom of serpents, but there is no medicine for a bad woman. She is more noxious than the viper, or than fire itself.

The dangerous American fascist is the man who wants to do in the United States in an American way what Hitler did in Germany in a Prussian way.

They are good furniture pictures, unworthy of praise, and undeserving of blame.

Sometimes things in life happen that allow us to understand our priorities very clearly. Ultimately you can see those as gifts.

The thing people don't realize, God bless them, is that my books are supposed to suck.