"See," Sasha muttered, eyeing the sun. 'It's mine."

I was a stepchild in two different families. The hardest thing about being a stepchild is you know that in some way everything would be easier if you didnt exist.

If I had a view like this to look down on every day, I would have the energy and inspiration to conquer the world. The trouble is, when you most need such a view, no one gives it to you.

Read at the level at which you want to write. Reading is the nourishment that feeds the kind of writing you want to do.

Goon Squad' took about three years to write and that's the short end. My second novel, 'Look at Me,' took six years.

I don’t want to fade away, I want to flame away - I want my death to be an attraction, a spectacle, a mystery. A work of art.

Because you can't write habitually and well all the time, you have to be willing to write badly. That's how you get the regularity that enables you to be present for the good stuff.

Reading is the nourishment that lets you do interesting work.

I'm always happy," Sasha said. "Sometimes I just forget.

The answers were maddeningly absent—it was like trying to remember a song that you knew made you feel a certain way, without a title, artist, or even a few bars to bring it back.

Vinegar: that's what fear smells like.

If you don't feel as close to God today as you did yesterday, who moved?

He still has the same way of calling to me, as if I'm still new to him, as if he has yet to get over me.

Try not to have a good time... this is supposed to be educational.

I go into a movie sort of saying what it's not going to be.

Look at these humans! How could such glacial slowness even be called life? An age could pass, virtual empires rise and fall in the time they took to open their mouths to utter some new inanity!

I believe that there is a God, and coming from an African tradition, I believe also that there are gods.

Many of my students don't know that I'm second lady of the United States... because, you know, it's a community college.

Kristen Stewart is kind of captivating; she can just stare at stuff and it works because I still want to watch it.

It is not the cause for which men took up arms that makes a victory more just or less, it is the order that is established when arms have been laid down.

A late lark twitters from the quiet skies.