I was funny -- ha-ha, not peculiar. It was a modest currency, like pennies: pedestrian, somewhat laborious, but a currency nonetheless. I was funny, in public, most often at my own expense.

Above all, in my anger, I was sad. Isn't that always the way, that at the heart of the fire is a frozen kernel of sorrow that the fire is trying -- valiantly, fruitlessly -- to eradicate.

I've discovered over the years that the simplest explanation is almost always the right one; and that hunger of one kind or another - desire, by another name - is the source of almost every sorrow.

That's so her. You know, torn between Big Ideas and a party. She's always been that way.

To my mind, Guernica is the most important online intellectual and literary journal in America today.

Geniuses have the shortest biographies.

It doesn't ever occur to you, as you fashion your mask so carefully, that it will grow into your skin and graft itself, come to seem irremovable.

We read to find life, in all its possibilities.

I wanted to write a voice that for me, as a reader, had been missing from the chorus: the voice of an angry woman.

Yes, writing is essential to me. It's my way of living in the world.

The more accurately one can illuminate a particular human experience, the better the work of art.

To justify one's actions is easy. Acting responsibly and being accountable for actions is very difficult.

It takes centuries for sense to become common

It so happens that the world is undergoing a transformation to which no change that has yet occurred can be compared either in scope or in rapidity.

That is the definition of faith - acceptance of that which we imagine to be true, that which we cannot prove.

If there's a heaven, I can't find the stairway

Charlotte, Will’s being vexing.' 'And the sun has come up in the east,' said Jem, to no one in particular.

All these emotions are coming from one thing - sound. It's not coming from your experiences in life, your childhood. It's related to those things, but it's being triggered by the sound.

Hence, all you vain delights, As short as are the nights Wherein you spend your folly! There's naught in this life sweet But only melancholy; O sweetest melancholy!

Grief is like sinking, like being buried.

I look for the hotels that have figured out the comfortable balance - a modern room that is well designed, and really clean sheets.