Like a historian, I interpret, select, discard, shape, simplify. Unlike a historian, I make up people's thoughts.

I dislike pastiche; it attracts attention to the language only.

It is the absence of facts that frightens people: the gap you open, into which they pour their fears, fantasies, desires.

Write a book you'd like to read. If you wouldn't read it, why would anybody else? Don't write for a perceived audience or market. It may well have vanished by the time your book's ready.

Fortitude. ... It means fixity of purpose. It means endurance. It means having the strength to live with what constrains you.

Feminism hasn't failed, it's just never been tried.

Truth can break the gates down, truth can howl in the street; unless truth is pleasing, personable and easy to like, she is condemned to stay whimpering at the back door.

If you have a good story idea, don't assume it must form a prose narrative. It may work better as a play, a screenplay or a poem. Be flexible.

The things you think are the disasters in your life are not the disasters really. Almost anything can be turned around: out of every ditch, a path, if you can only see it.

I didn't cry much after I was 35, but staggered stony-faced into middle age, a handkerchief still in my bag just in case.

You're only young once, they say, but doesn't it go on for a long time? More years than you can bear.

It is rooted deep in your bones

And when wind and winter hardenAll the loveless land, It will whisper of the garden, You will understand.

I definitely have curves. I dont intend on losing them.

Catholic dioceses typically spent hundreds of thousands of dollars recklessly, then filed for bankruptcy. The goal was to avoid the money going to the hands of victims of predator priests.

Just keep taking the next step and keep having excellence in the ordinary.

I throw the ball as hard as ever, but it just takes longer to get to the plate.

To me the poets are closer than I am to the idea of voice, to a sort of primeval song that we all participate in.

Jennifer Lawrence is just the coolest girl. Everyone forgets how young she is because she's so together, such an old soul. She just gets it. She's one savvy chick.

It's not easy being grateful all the time. But it's when you feel least thankful that you are most in need of what gratitude can give you

It's like, at the end, there's this surprise quiz: Am I proud of me? I gave my life to become the person I am right now. Was it worth what I paid?