It's wonderful that nothing you write is ever going to be as beautiful as what's in your head, because that gap is where the art can enter and begin to stretch its limbs.

As a person, I do ascribe to a lot of magical thinking myself.

In the end, fiction is the craft of telling truth through lies.

While writing, writers are living inside a character or characters, and when the book ekes into the world, writers are living inside the reader. That's more than connecting.

Amor animi arbitrio sumitu, non ponitur; we choose to love; we do not choose to cease loving.

Who, in the midst of passion, is vigilant against illness? Who listens to the reports of recently decimated populations in Spain, India, Bora Bora, when new lips, tongues and poems fill the world?

If there's a black cat that crosses the street in my path, I will turn around and walk 20 minutes out of my way to not cross it.

Depressing thought: my friends were the girls I ate lunch with, all buddies from kindergarten who knew one another so well we weren't sure if we even liked one another anymore.

Sometimes you have to let time carry you past your troubles.

I'm a private person, a shy person. Sometimes, reading for eleven hours straight feels to me like the perfect way to spend a day.

I love Twitter. It's like having a closet full of clever friends that you can visit twice a day, then shove back into the darkness when you're tired of them.

I told you. I don't do soft and gentle.

If I want help I need to pay for it~ and to pay for it~ I need more money.

Blaming none, disrespecting nothing is the doorway to Unity Consciousness.

My karma just ran over my dogma.

When we stop playing God, God can play through us.

To understand is to experience harmony between what we aim at and what is given, between the intention and the performance - and the body is our anchorage in the world.

Stop it now and take control. Write this on a card and pin it up where you can see it... MY THOUGHTS CONTROL MY LIFE!

One of my goals is to allow readers to see my characters and the world they inhabit as vividly as possible.

I would always reserve a special place in my heart for Pittsburgh.