I use my fiction to explore my own unconscious issues. I usually don't even know what's going on with me until I'm writing. That doesn't mean my books are autobiographical.

She would be half a planet away, floating in a turquoise sea, dancing by moonlight to flamenco guitar.

The phoenix must burn to emerge.

I know it feels like you have all these options and when you make a decision, you lose a world of possibilities. But the reality is, until you make a decision, you have nothing at all.

Remember it all, every insult, every tear. Tattoo it on the inside of your mind. In life, knowledge of poisons is essential. I've told you, nobody becomes an artist unless they have to.

Their love as a dragonfly, skimming over echo park, stoppin to visit the lotus. Eating dreams and drinking blue sky.

How right that the body changed over time, becoming a gallery of scars, a canvas of experience, a testament to life and one's capacity to endure it.

It's such a liability to love another person.

Find someone who will tremble for your touch, someone whose fingers are a poem.

Memory is the fourth dimension to any landscape.

Beauty was empty as a gourd, vain as a parakeet. But it had power. It smelled of musk and oranges and made you close your eyes in a prayer.

Likewise 'radical'. I'm only radical because the architectural profession has got lost. Architects are such a dull lot - and they're so convinced that they matter.

No life can be dreary when work is delight.

I have been able to hope for the best, expect the worst, and take what comes along. If there has been one fundamental reason for my success, this is it.

I'm focusing on healing lives and teaching people that they can heal - giving them tools to heal.

Half of the time I don't know what they're talking about; their jokes seem to relate to a past that everyone but me has shared. I'm a foreigner in the world and I don't understand the language.

If there's something as good as [him] in my life, I'm going to pay for it.

I'm a huge fan of the Rod Serling sci-fi, where they could take the most odd and enormous ideas but ground them in something very human.

The secret source of humor is not joy but sorrow.

I have a specialized racing bike, which is great because it has a solid build, is comfortable to ride, and is lightweight.

Over the last 10 years, women have stalled out at the top.