Scream at the mangled leather carcass lying at the foot of the stairs, and my parents would roar with laughter. "That's what you get for leaving your wallet on the kitchen table.

Like all of my friends, she's a lousy judge of character.

At the end of a miserable day, instead of grieving my virtual nothing, I can always look at my loaded wastepaper basket and tell myself that if I failed, at least I took a few trees down with me.

If you aren't cute, you may as well be clever.

The rabbit of Easter. He bring of the chocolate.

I find it ridiculous to assign a gender to an inanimate object incapable of disrobing and making an occasional fool of itself.

but I have no mind for business and considered staying awake to be enough of an accomplishment.

I hate you' she said to me one afternoon. 'I really, really hate you.' Call me sensitive, but I couldn't help but take it personally.

People are often frightened of Parisians, but an American in Paris will find no harsher critic than another American.

My first semester I had only nine students. Hoping they might view me as professional and well prepared, I arrived bearing name tags fashioned in the shape of maple leaves.

I was just struggling with my inner vachette and pondering the depths of my own inhumanity.

Failures can be called ‘strengtheners’ as they make you determined to reach your goal with the lessons they teach.

Call it anything else if you will—fear, anxiety, nervousness, sweating—but “shyness” is the historic word for it.

A bird that fears falling off of a tree branch is ignorant of its gifts.

Baby is baby.

Grant was something rare in that or any war. He could learn from experience.

Difference of opinion is a clash, and to clash is a ‘weakness’.

To be alone was my best interest because needing myself was looking for you

Rudeness is the weak man's imitation of strength.

I often think that the prime directive for me as a teacher of writing is akin to that for a physician, which is this: do no harm.

I understand that nobody understands me, but I can't be someone I'm not.