Peculiar as I was, and remain, I was trained to be practical. I'm still amazed at the radical temerity of my friends, you included, Julie, who choose poetry as their vocation. I envy your faith.

Before I got my present job, I spent many years teaching writing part-time, so-called, at community colleges and universities. It's academia's version of migrant labor.

You're unusual. That's better than popular if you have some courage.

I loved short stories, and they were all I wanted to write. I love the compression of them and the exactitude needed to get a whole world into such a small space.

Whatever one may say about the perils of workshops, they help writers internalize an awareness of audience.

I figured that to be a writer I would need to have been born in the nineteenth century, be British, or have three names. So I turned my sights elsewhere . . . to acting.

Unless you're Stephen King or Joyce Carol Oates, no one's going to recognize you on the street, and you're promoting your book, not yourself.

Whatever we know as children, this is the world, eaten whole and without question.

Everyone is the right person for the right person.

QUEEN, n. A woman by whom the realm is ruled when there is a king, and through whom it is ruled when there is not.

Women and music should not be dated.

You can have anything in this world you want, if you want it badly enough and you're willing to pay the price.

I find many drawbacks of myself. But, each time when I visit Lourdes, I receive a lesson of reconciliation. When you see ill people or invalids around, you realize that it is a sin to complain!

If fifty thousand men were to die for the good of the State, I certainly would weep for them, but political necessity comes before everything else.

And I had this big, long list of what I wanted in a guy but I realized I didn't stack up to the list myself.

Its really important to understand the difference between sentience and consciousness, which are important for human beings.

They aren't kidding when they say, "Wash Whites separately.

The greatest medicine is a true friend.