My writing process is very organic. I start with an idea. I have the general story arc and the cast. But then I sit down to write, and things change.

It looked like the world was covered in a cobbler crust of brown sugar and cinnamon.

Sometimes you weren't supposed to share pain. Sometimes it was best just to deal with it alone.

Happiness is a risk. If you’re not a little scared, then you’re not doing it right.

Every life needs a little space. It leaves room for good things to enter it.

Don't let anyone see your vulnerable spots. Once they knew how to hurt you, they would do it again and again.

I needed to stop being what everyone thought I was.

The next morning dawned bright and sweet, like ribbon candy.

She looked like autumn, when leaves turned and fruit ripened.

You can't change where you come from, but you can change where you go from here. Just like a book. If you don't like the ending, you make up a new one.

She was so Southern that she cried tears that came straight from the Mississippi, and she always smelled faintly of cottonwood and peaches.

Most people do not want much. All they want is to be envied by most people.

Accepting defeat is not wisdom.

Yond Cassius has a lean and hungry look.

We must turn the greatest collective challenge facing humankind today – climate change – into the greatest opportunity for common progress towards a sustainable future.

Prose should have a flow, the forward momentum of a certain energized weight; it should feel like a voice tumbling in your ear.

All great artists know that part of their task is to light up the distance between two human beings.

You could always go on changing things but there comes a time when you have to decide to stop.

Most of the nations around the world are led by tyrants and dictators and thugs who are leading their countries for one reason.

Unhappy is the soul enslaved by the love of anything that is mortal.

A college president is like the lawn mower at a cemetary: he has a lot of people under him, but they don't pay much attention to him