Novels without female characters were a lifeless desert.

...falling in love could be achieved in a single word—a glance.

come back, come back to me

Imagining what it is like to be someone other than yourself is at the core of our humanity. It is the essence of compassion, and it is the beginning of morality.

I've never had a moment's doubt. I love you. I believe in you completely. You are my dearest one. My reason for life.

A person is, among all else, a material thing, easily torn and not easily mended.

True intelligence requires fabulous imagination.

When its gone, you'll know what a gift love was. you'll suffer like this. So go back and fight to keep it.

I believe the novella is the perfect form of prose fiction. It is the beautiful daughter of a rambling, bloated ill-shaven giant (but a giant who's a genius on his best days).

I'm holding back, delaying the information. I'm lingering in the prior moment because it was a time when other outcomes were still possible.

Observing human variety can give pleasure, but so too can human sameness.

No beautiful aspect of humankind is foreign to person with a lucid soul.

Possession without understanding leads to loss

Nothing determines who we will become so much as those things we choose to ignore.

When I'm around the kids I feel like I act the most grown-up just because you're supposed to. And I say things, like every other day, that remind me of my own parents.

Every art and every faculty contemplates certain things as its principal objects.

They say the average person can't make a living in art... but if you tell me there's something I can't do, that's what I have to do.

I don't think about it in terms of being a woman. Being gracious, attentive, curious, interested are requirements for everyone.

the whole way down, I was only thinking one thing . . . L E N A

My imperfections and failures are as much a blessing from God as my successes and my talents and I lay them both at his feet.

Nothing can ever be a rule in drama, because then you're saying certain things won't ever happen, and that would be very boring.