I've never been resigned to ready-made ideas as I was to ready-made clothes, perhaps because although I couldn't sew, I could think.

People genuinely happy in their choices seem less often tempted to force them on other people than those who feel martyred and broken by their lives.

Every artist seems to me to have the job of bearing witness to the world we live in. To some extent I think of all of us as artists, because we have voices and we are each of us unique.

The message of women's liberation is that women can love each other and ourselves against our degrading education.

I didn't want to be a boy, ever, but I was outraged that his height and intelligence were graces for him and gaucheries for me.

Morality is a test of our conformity rather than our integrity.

To live in a harmonious balance of commitments and pleasures is what I strive for.

My private measure of success is daily. If this were to be the last day of my life would I be content with it? To live in a harmonious balance of commitments and pleasures is what I strive for.

If we don't bear witness as citizens, as people, as individuals, the right that we have had to life is sacrificed. There is a silence, instead of a speaking presence.

Morality, like language, is an invented structure for conserving and communicating order. And morality is learned, like language, by mimicking and remembering.

I had always said to myself that forty was the cut off point of my apprenticeship which may for some people sound like a very long one, but the novel as art is a middle-aged art.

Everything gets better with the touch of love.

To believe in God is to yearn for His existence and furthermore it is to act as if He did exist.

What I've learned is that you really don't need to be a celebrity or have money or have the paparazzi following you around to be famous.

Laughter isn't even the other side of tears. It is tears turned inside out. Truly the suffering is great, here on earth.

O, dread and dire word. Eternity! What mind of man can understand it?

I love revision. Where else can spilled milk be turned into ice cream?

I don't think I'm unusual in preferring my laptop to be thin and light.

I have always regarded divorce as essentially disagreeable, like castor oil, but necessary.

I feel strongly about helping fundraise and donating to causes that help children, animals, and the environment. I wish I could do more!

Any woodsman can tell you that in a broken and sundered nest, one can hardly find more than a precious few whole eggs. So it is with the family.