Sometimes there isn't a way to hug and make everything better.

Teaching writing puts you on the point of a pin in terms of what you want your own writing to be.

I sometimes think that we expect too much resolution in this world.

Early in the phase of being in a female body, there's all this desire that comes at you, a lot of it hostile, a lot of it dangerous, a lot of it ruinous.

I do some messing around with things, not necessarily about me but about place and people and the things around.

I grew up flying over oceans and moving and sailing.

There's a lot of water in everything I've ever written. There's always oceans and pools.

You can sometimes find something good on the other side of doing something very, very painful.

In order to have a real life of any romance, there has to be a level of fantasy.

I don't think you can have an imagination without having fantasy, and you can't have that rich a life without an imagination.

That's what perfect means. You're finished.

Salvation belongs to the Saviour.

Warriors achieve more than worriers.

That's not free market when companies go out and move and sell back into America. No, that's the dumb market, O.K.? That's the dumb market.

Fools wait for a lucky day, but everyday is a lucky day for an industrious man.

I live for competition. It makes my life complete.

Maybe that was how it was with all first loves. They own a little piece of your heart, always.

When we are born, when we enter this world, it is as if we signed a pact for the rest of our life, but a day may come when we will ask ourselves Who signed this on my behalf?

The student will try to defy the master. Always.

When intimacy followed love in Italy there were no longer any vain pretensions between two lovers.

It is not true that suffering ennobles the character; happiness does that sometimes, but suffering for the most part, makes men petty and vindictive.