No one in my family was a reader of literary fiction. So, I didn't have encouragement, but I didn't have discouragement, because I don't think anybody knew what that meant.

I hid my deepest feelings so well I forgot where I placed them.

My mother said I was a clingy kid until I was about four. I also remember that from the age of eight she and I fought almost every day.

If you can't change your fate, change your attitude.

So sad! This is the saddest part when you lose someone you love- that person keeps changing. And later you wonder, Is this the same person I lost?

I am like a falling star who has finally found her place next to another in a lovely constellation, where we will sparkle in the heavens forever.

Writing is an extreme privilege but it's also a gift. It's a gift to yourself and it's a gift of giving a story to someone.

I was six when my mother taught me the art of invisible strength..."strongest wind cannot be seen."

How can you blame a person for his fears and weaknesses unless you have felt the same and done differently?

Libraries are the pride of the city.

Who knows where inspiration comes from. Perhaps it arises from desperation. Perhaps it comes from the flukes of the universe, the kindness of the muses.

The whole world ought to know the story of the Bible.

I learn my world through writing.

A modern man registers a hundred times more sensory impressions than an eighteenth-century artist

Scare the hell out of the American people.

He only half dies who leaves an image of himself in his sons.

Concepts create idols; only wonder comprehends anything. People kill one another over idols. Wonder makes us fall to our knees.

I do know I want to have children. That's the only thing missing in my life. I certainly thought I'd have some by now.

The new psychiatrists say that everything and anything can be traced back to sexual causes. Their method, for example, could be explained as the eroticism of father confessors.

A vagrant is everywhere at home.

Knowledge is potential power. It transforms itself into actual power the moment you decisively act on it.