I'm still very blunt: If you want to be a writer, get a day job. The fact that I have actually been able to make a living at it is astonishing.

Two or three things I know for sure, and one of them is that if we are not beautiful to each other, we cannot know beauty in any form.

Change, when it comes, cracks everything open.

Things come apart so easily when they have been held together with lies.

Fiction is a piece of truth that turns lies to meaning.

Two or three things I know for sure, and one of them is the way you can both hate and love something you are not sure you understand.

I did not begin with craft, I began with strong feelings and worked toward craft.

Class, race, sexuality, gender and all other categories by which we categorize and dismiss each other need to be excavated from the inside.

One of the strengths I derive from my class background is that I am accustomed to contempt.

The only magic we have is what we make in ourselves, the muscles we build up on the inside, the sense of belief we create from nothing.

I have wanted everything as a writer and a woman, but most of all a world changed utterly by my revelations.

Life is the byproduct of our thoughts. To make life better—think better.

I have a thing for things that last.

If a building looks better under construction than it does when finished, then it's a failure.

If you feel like it's difficult to change, you will probably have a harder time succeeding.

In spite of all the terrible things that happen in our world, hope can - and must - prevail.

Remember that all is One... and what you do to your neighbor, your friend or your foe, is a reflection of what you think of your Creator.

We must get away from the traditional idea that the saints in Heaven have one eternal holiday; that they have nothing to occupy them save playing a harp and incessantly singing.

I'm not in the being-annoyed business.

I feel that I am best positioned to fight for America's future here in the trenches of the United States Senate.

Television is very dangerous. Because it repeats and repeats and repeats our disasters, instead of our triumphs.