I was born, and then I was quietly resentful of that fact for a few years...but then I went to a library and it was okay.

I wish there was someone I could have written to after that, someone I could have written to explain how awful it was to have someone touch you, then look at you properly and change his mind.

Home is where your teapots are.

I collected pictures and I drew pictures and I looked at the pictures by myself. And because no one else ever saw them, the pictures were perfect and true. They were alive.

The first coffee of the morning is never, ever, ready quickly enough. You die before it’s ready and then your ghost pours the resurrection potion out of the moka pot.

I feel like an old lady; my hero is Miss Marple.

Because things grow. Wherever there is air and light and open space, things grow.

There were days when he touched the tip of her nose and it was enough, a miracle of plenty.

The language of [Catholic] mysticism - its repeated attempts to lay consciousness itself bare and speak all the intensely opposing yet interconnected parts of it that cannot be spoken.

I think, basically, what I'm good for is reading - a lot.

I dont have a style. I just try to write what the story demands.

Oh, there were many here who were justly shot by unjust men.

The first domesticated animal was the scapegoat.

Since I was seventeen I thought I might be a star. I'd think about all my heroes, Charlie Parker, Jimi Hendrix... I had a romantic feeling about how these people became famous.

We all look at ourselves in the mirror and think, 'Am I good?'

You have got to have an agent. Its a business. But I think there is a way to be artful and commercial at the same time.

Meditation is the pathway to enlightenment. Move the ego aside and be still, open, clear, bright and fully conscious.

The proof of liberal virtue is generousity with other people's money.

Principles-and I have in mind such principles as states' rights or national sovereignty or the free market or pacifism-have a way of drying up while the sap of life goes flowing in another direction.

It's good to listen to electronic music when you're stressed out because you will feel a release afterwards.

Slash can take three notes and make a beautiful solo. And that's one thing I've always really admired about his guitar playing. I'm a huge Slash fan all around.