I rarely write in my own voice except in book reviews and memoirs; otherwise, I am writing in mediated voices, modulated in terms of the characters whom the voices express.

Memory blurs, that's the point. If memory didn't blur you wouldn't have the fool's courage to do things again, again, again, that tear you apart.

Reading is the sole means by which we slip, involuntarily, often helplessly, into another's skin, another's voice, another's soul.

I never change, I simply become more myself.

How lovely this world is, really: one simply has to look.

Our enemy is by tradition our savior, in preventing us from superficiality.

Read widely, and without apology. Read what you want to read, not what someone tells you you should read.

Night comes to the desert all at once, as if someone turned off the light.

Keep a light, hopeful heart. But ­expect the worst.

See, people come into your life for a reason. They might not know it themselves, why. You might not know it. But there's a reason. There has to be

Be your own editor/critic. Sympathetic but merciless!

Don't be a fool, there is no such thing as just a girl.

…This remains the great deficiency of literature: its imitation of nature cannot prepare you for the main events. For the main events, only experience will answer.

A promise is just an empty shell filled with words, and words are weightless.

He has been mad for you these many months, ever since you prodded him in the nether regions with a hedgehog.

We need to reach that happy stage of our development when differences and diversity are not seen as sources of division and distrust, but of strength and inspiration.

Eddie Izzard is absolutely brilliant. I would love to write something for him.

The blues will be blue, and the jealousies green, but when love picks its color it demands to be seen.

The fans have been great, they've stuck with me through a lot of hit-less years and I think they were as determined as I was that it was time to put an end to the lack of hits.

I collaborate with people who know I'm a control freak.

It's necessary, at some point, to destroy your beauty.