In a lot of ways, being a writer is a lousy job - grueling, emotionally taxing, terrible hours, no health care - so if it wasn't about love, what would be the point?

There are ideas it will be easy to say in the future that we just don't have the language for now.

If I could start over today, I would choose literature again. If the answers exist in the world or in the universe, I still think that's where we're going to find them.

The novel form is about the protagonist's struggle to transform his arbitrary, fragmented, given experience into a narrative as meaningful as his favorite books.

Poetry is another space, like love, where we extend that extra credit to the writer.

Humor is really important to me. All my favorite writers are writers I consider to be funny, including Tolstoy and Dostoevsky, even though that's not necessarily their rap.

At any given time, there are ideas and images that can only be communicated indirectly.

When you invent something, you're drawing on reservoirs of knowledge that you already have. It's only when you're faithful to the truth that something can come to you from the outside.

I am a great admirer of Henry Jeffreys and have been eagerly awaiting his booze and empire book for many years!

I didn't care about truth; I cared about beauty. It took me many years--it took the experience of lived time--to realize that they really are the same thing.

People are shaped by friendship as much as by romance.

Many of the characters are fools and they're always playing tricks on meand treating me badly.

If you are ready to cry..to feel the pain..to take the risk? You are ready for love

Here was the opportunity to free herself from all those identical days and nights. pg 30

The big problem is time. I don't have enough of it to do all the things I think about doing.

You cannot move on to a new phase in life if you bring your old baggage with you, let the bad go, and move onto the new.

If you're not overprepared, you're underprepared.

My disease is one of the best things that has happened to me; it has pulled me out of a quietly desperate life toward one full of love and hope.

O, what a world of vile ill-favored faults, looks handsome in three hundred pounds a year!

All pride is willing pride.

Time of difficulty test our faith, our fortitude and our strenght. During these times, the level of our imaan becomes manifest