Occasionally people ask me how it is I write different types of things, and my answer to that is it's very natural. You get bored writing one kind of thing all the time.

it's like a squid in love with the sky.

I do not know what I regret. I sit with my pen, and cannot find an end to that sentence.

The sky was as blue as a stupid postcard, and the islands were as green as islands.

The natural world is so adaptable...So adaptable you wonder what's natural.

Older teens tend to write to me and say, 'Thank you for not writing down to teenagers.'

Whispering makes a narrow place narrower.

Why not write a book which is as sophisticated as a book for an adult, but is about the concerns that teenagers actually have?

It's insulting to believe that teens should have a different kind of book than an adult should.

Teens are not like the weird, dumb dwarves you have around your house. They are actually you when you were younger.

I can't tell you how irritating it is to be an atheist in a haunted house.

Sometimes gentle sometimes capricious sometimes awful never the same for two moments together almost human in its passions almost spiritual in its tenderness almost Divine in its infinity.

Remember, I'm a doctor's daughter. So obviously I'm interested in all medical things.

I did a lot of musical theater when I was younger, and I really hope to get back there someday. I miss singing a lot. I listen to Broadway show tunes in my car and sing along to them.

I've had a lot of different responses to my films. I got a lot of support from 'The Piano,' the obvious one, but it feels like an ocean, with a lot going on - the goal is to keep alive.

If you're not sure you could love your children, please don't have them, because they might grow up and kill us.

If you want to be a good writer, make sure you read. I'm amazed by how many people don't bother to do that.

You need to know that you are a spiritual being so that you can do helpful things to allow your innate qualities to unfold and express.

All unnecessary vows are folly, because they suppose a prescience of the future, which has not been given us.

I was always trying to be leaner and thinner to fit the standard and the mold.

There live not three good men unhanged in England; and one of them is fat and grows old.