Love is a fever," she said. "And when you come out of it you'll discover whether you've been lucky - or not.

Your numbness is something perhaps you cannot help. It is what the world has done to you. But your coldness. That is what you do to the world.

This is what happened in love. One of you cried a lot and then both of you grew sarcastic.

For love to last, you had to have illusions or have no illusions at all. But you had to stick to one or the other. It was the switching back and forth that endangered things.

Usually she ordered a cup of coffee and a cup of tea, as well as a brownie, propping up her sadness with chocolate and caffeine so that it became an anxiety.

A short story is a love affair, a novel is a marriage. A short story is a photograph; a novel is a film.

One had to build shelters. One had to make pockets and live inside them.

They had, finally, the only thing anyone really wants in life: someone to hold your hand when you die.

The only really good piece of advice I have for my students is, 'Write something you'd never show your mother or father. And you know what they say? I could never do that!'

She was unequal to anyone's wistfulness. She had made too little of her life. Its loneliness shamed her like a crime.

If one publishes, then one is creating a public record of Learning to Write.

Each individual needs to be pregnant with the seed of purpose.

Till I have your disposition, your goodness, I never can have your happiness.”~ Jane Austen (Pride & Prejudice)

Soccer isn't the same as Bach or Buddhism. But it is often more deeply felt than religion, and just as much a part of the community's fabric, a repository of traditions.

The worst thing that can happen to you in travel is having a gun pointed at you by a very young person. That's happened to me maybe four times in my life. I didn't like it.

I can do Shakespeare, Ibsen, English accents, Irish accents, no accent, stand on my head, tap dance, sing, look 17 or look 70.

On dreary night let lusty sunshine fall.

Getting away from being 'a good girl' is important because it's impossible to be a 'good girl' and a writer at the same time.

Man," I cried, "how ignorant art thou in thy pride of wisdom!

I don't think I live the lifestyle that's expected of a quote unquote R&B artist. I'm just not that dude.

And if wishes were horses, I’d have been run over in childhood.