It's better to be nominated for awards than not to be nominated for them, but of course to some degree such awards [National Book Award] are always subjective.

When you’re in love you don’t have to do a damn thing. You can just be. You can just stay quiet in the world. You don’t have to move an inch.

As my mother once said to me, ‘They’re quite crazy, dear – men are. What you look for is one of them whose insanity is large enough, and calm and generous enough, to include you.

Forget art. Put your trust in ice cream.

In truth, there are only two realities: the one for people who are in love or love each other, and the one for people who are standing outside all that.

Needing something is not the same thing as being interested in the thing itself.

You are a real find and you keep me satisfied, up to a point. After all, I'm a malcontent and you can't change that.

If you want to see the consequences of ideas, write a story. If you want to see the consequences of belief, write a story in which somebody is acting on the ideas or beliefs that she has.

Gainfully unemployed, very proud of it, too.

When I'm writing, I'm waiting to see somebody, and I'm waiting to hear them. It's almost like conjuring spirits out of the air, using your own imaginative instability.

A novel is not a summary of its plot but a collection of instances, of luminous specific details that take us in the direction of the unsaid and unseen.

To reduce poetry to its reflections of historical events and movements would be like reducing the poet's words to their logical or grammatical connotations.

What would life be without challenges?

The reviewer is a singularly detested enemy because he is, unlike the hapless artist, invulnerable.

I'm always nervous before I go on stage, but once I'm out there everything is great and it's my favorite place to be.

Just because you're on the Disney Channel and you always have a smile on your face, they think you're perfect, and it's obvious that nobody's life really is.

Experience has always shown, and reason also, that affairs which depend on many seldom succeed.

No one could have fathomed what a life he'd led, for it was chiefly a life lived in his mind.

My favourite trainers are Converse.

I try to think professionally that my body is my job and just get up and do my modeling work, you always feel better after it.

Get out of your head, into your space and await the invisible stranger