Most places we leave in childhood grow less, not more, fancy.

You can learn a lot from your lovers, but-for the most part-you get to keep your friends longer, and you learn more from them.

Self-hatred is worse than loneliness.

It doesn't really matter who said it - it's so obviously true. Bevore you can write anything, you have to notice something.

The time to read Madame Bovary is when your romantic hopes and desires have crashed, and you will believe that your future relationships will have disappointing - even devastating - consequences.

Never trust a man with a lunatic wife in an attic, " Richard told me. "And anyone named Heathcliff should make you suspicious.

That's okay, " I said. "We're writers. We make things up.

You can't possibly know that you're going to be a writer!" Miss Frost said. "It's not a career choice.

Small towns may revile you, but they have to keep you-they can't turn you away.

Novels are just another kind of cross-dressing, aren't they?

When I am dead, I hope it may be said: His sins were scarlet, but his books were read.

For the record: I wear makeup. All. The. Time. But I do it in a way that looks natural.

Towards the avoidance of a piece of verbal confusion: What is intended to be actively destroyed must first of all have been firmly grasped; what crumbles away crumbles away, but cannot be destroyed.

It is a danger to wait around for an idea to occur to you. You have to find the idea.

Life is a hideous thing, and from the background behind what we know of it peer daemoniacal hints of truth which make it sometimes a thousandfold more hideous.

I'm an American by birth, but I'm a Texan by the Grace of God.

Hey, I always say: if you want a quiet life, become a monk.

Success is a project that's always under construction.