On the elusive gift of blending austerity of craft with elasticity of allure.

Memory blurs, that's the point. If memory didn't blur you wouldn't have the fool's courage to do things again, again, again, that tear you apart.

Reading is the sole means by which we slip, involuntarily, often helplessly, into another's skin, another's voice, another's soul.

I never change, I simply become more myself.

How lovely this world is, really: one simply has to look.

Our enemy is by tradition our savior, in preventing us from superficiality.

Read widely, and without apology. Read what you want to read, not what someone tells you you should read.

Night comes to the desert all at once, as if someone turned off the light.

Keep a light, hopeful heart. But ­expect the worst.

See, people come into your life for a reason. They might not know it themselves, why. You might not know it. But there's a reason. There has to be

Be your own editor/critic. Sympathetic but merciless!

You have to write the book that wants to be written. And if the book will be too difficult for grown-ups, then you write it for children.

I ransack public libraries, and find them full of sunk treasure.

I hold steadfast to hope.

The high is what you crave, what you would kill for... and believe me, you will lie to yourself until it's to late to stop.

Children are born atheists. Then they are indoctrinated and abused by so-called 'God's representatives.' Innocents are scarred emotionally and psychologically by those who are sworn to protect them.

The only difference between 'try' and 'triumph' is varying degrees of 'umph'

Argument is to me the air I breathe. Given any proposition, I cannot help believing the other side and defending it.

Conceited men often seem a harmless kind of men, who, by an overweening self-respect, relieve others from the duty of respecting them at all.

Hair, in fact, is probably the bane of most women's lives.

She refers to her past as the time before she was "blown away.