It is radical for a woman to choose to survive and to choose to eat anything.

I think someone who writes a ghost story probably needs to believe it in some way.

There are so many people who write really interesting work and try super hard and still don't get published.

I've heard a lot of editors and agents say, "If the book is good, it will get published." I totally disagree with that.

It's really difficult to know what is the best way forward when you're not getting a lot of support - and probably most writers aren't getting enough support.

I love ghost stories, I love to read them, and I love the idea of being haunted.

Nice girls are not supposed to be hungry. They are not supposed to feed themselves or care about their own food. They're definitely not supposed to take food out of a child's mouth.

When I was in college, I had a friend who was an artist and her theory was that all the best art in the world is funny/sad. That was her favorite genre. Funny/sad are probably my two favorite tones.

I've always been a teaser, even as a kid.

Don't you think almost anything can be funny? Almost anything.

You can hurt people's feelings if you laugh.

Before you leave here, Sir, you’re going to learn that one of the most brutal things in the world is your average nineteen-year-old American boy.

Arthur, do you think the fall of the Wall means anything? Do you think that this means that even one fewer body will burn?

That's the way I try to live. I think it's the only way for human beings at this point in our evolution as souls, where everyone in their lifetime is going through stuff.

And if there's love, you can do without happiness too. Even with sorrow, life is sweet.

It was all so far away - there was quiet and an untouched feel to the country and I could work as I pleased.

Trust is like that. You can break it for a good reason. But it still remains broken.

Fiction is often a much-needed step back that gives you the distance to see things more clearly; it's very often better at explaining why events happened as opposed to just what happened.

I wanted to do my artistic work, and in Iran you have censorship. It was difficult for me to do the work I wanted to do.

When I came to Mogadishu...here was one road built by the Italians. If you try to force me to stand down, I will leave the city as I found it. I came to power with a gun; only the gun can make me go.