She said America was a spoiled child ignorant of grief.

I tend to foster drama via bleakness. If I want the reader to feel sympathy for a character, I cleave the character in half, on his birthday. And then it starts raining. And he's made of sugar.

What I regret most in my life are failures of kindness.

What I regret most in my life are failures of kindness. Those moments when another human being was there, in front of me, suffering, and I responded . . . sensibly. Reservedly. Mildly.

Do those things that incline you toward the big questions, and avoid the things that would reduce you and make you trivial.

Developing our sympathetic compassion is not only possible but the only reason for us to be here on earth.

According to me, your life is going to be a gradual process of becoming kinder and more loving. Hurry up. Speed it along. Start right now.

It's a big world, and I really like it.

Character is that sum total of moments we can't explain.

The generalizing writer is like the passionate drunk, stumbling into your house mumbling: I know I'm not being clear, exactly, but don't you kind of feel what I'm feeling?

Kindness, it turns out, is hard - it starts out all rainbows and puppy dogs, and expands to include . . . well, EVERYTHING.

Reality is messy, but fairytale is clean

I cannot explain what's between us, Lady Newbury, other than to say that I have an uncanny urge to kiss you whenever we meet.

I do believe in soulmates and happy/successful marriages. No marriage can be happy 24x7 for 365 days. Both partners have to make the relationship work, is what I believe in.

God gives us power to bear all the sorrows of His making; but He does not give us power to bear the sorrows of our own making, which the anticipation of sorrow most assuredly is.

We've got one life and the older we get the more we come to realize how short it is.

If you see bigotry, oppose it.

The beauty of art is that there are no rules

I think it's unworkable. What are we going to have, people like in contentious divorces suddenly claiming that one or the other of them should go to jail because once he or she spanked the child.

If you're an underdog, mentally disabled, physically disabled, if you don't fit in, if you're not as pretty as the others, you can still be a hero.