No one really wants to be laughed at.

I think someone who writes a ghost story probably needs to believe it in some way.

There are so many people who write really interesting work and try super hard and still don't get published.

I've heard a lot of editors and agents say, "If the book is good, it will get published." I totally disagree with that.

It's really difficult to know what is the best way forward when you're not getting a lot of support - and probably most writers aren't getting enough support.

I love ghost stories, I love to read them, and I love the idea of being haunted.

Nice girls are not supposed to be hungry. They are not supposed to feed themselves or care about their own food. They're definitely not supposed to take food out of a child's mouth.

It is radical for a woman to choose to survive and to choose to eat anything.

When I was in college, I had a friend who was an artist and her theory was that all the best art in the world is funny/sad. That was her favorite genre. Funny/sad are probably my two favorite tones.

I've always been a teaser, even as a kid.

Don't you think almost anything can be funny? Almost anything.

If you can't do anything about it, laugh like hell.

He who destroys another person to succeed in life will have destruction awaiting him at the post of his success.

One thing that I tell people all the time is, 'I'm not going to answer a call from you after nine o'clock at night or before nine o'clock in the morning unless it's an emergency.'

Philosophy is as far separated from impiety as religion is from fanaticism.

[On The Philippines:] ... eighty dialects and languages are spoken; we are a fragmented nation of loyal believers, divided by blood feuds and controlled by the Church.

There are certain narrow, umimaginative, and autocratic old people who seem to call out the most mischievous and sometimes the worst traits in children.

We do a lot of shows for young people who have probably never been to the theater before and they are learning about the Holocaust, which unhappily, many of them do not know about.

I believe a solid, really strong middle-class is the key to making the country in the best way.

To be an artist at all is like living in Switzerland during a world war. To be an artist in Zurich, in 1917, implies a degree of self-absorption that would have glazed over the eyes of Narcissus.

People pretend things didn't happen. Or so what, they happened, it's okay. Well, it's never okay. It's always ruined.