The dread had not left my soul.

I lived in books more than I lived anywhere else.

I went away in my head, into a book. That was where I went whenever real life was too hard or too inflexible.

A story only matters, I suspect, to the extent that the people in the story change.

But there was a kitten on my pillow, and it was purring in my face and vibrating gently with every purr, and, very soon, I slept.

Books were safer than other people anyway.

Nobody looks like what they really are on the inside. You don’t. I don’t. People are much more complicated than that. It’s true of everybody.

I make art, sometimes I make true art, and sometimes it fills the empty places in my life. Some of them. Not all.

Words save our lives, sometimes.

You get on with your own life. Lettie gave it to you. You just have to grow up and try and be worth it.

They were not my friends, after all. They were just the people I went to school with.

Every day has its great grief or its small anxiety. ... One cloud is dispelled, another forms. There is hardly one day in a hundred of real joy and bright sunshine.

Want to give a very strong energy to someone with a simple act? Then, smile!

I don't get recognized much, and am very happy with that. The fans I have met have all been delightful.

I look out the window sometimes to seek the color of the shadows and the different greens in the trees, but when I get ready to paint I just close my eyes and imagine a scene.

Books make great gifts because they're something you love that you can share.

I don't think Obama's a socialist or evil, I just think he's wrong and I disagree with him, he's a leftist, that's what they are in France and in Great Britain and in Canada.

I think what I have done is claimed the space and pushed it forward as much as I can in relationship to who I am and how I live my life.

Genius is the error in the system.

Reason guides but a small part of man, and the rest obeys feeling, true or false, and passion, good or bad.

I am a student of whoever I can learn from.