The second draft is on yellow paper, that's when I work on characterizations. The third is pink, I work on story motivations. Then blue, that's where I cut, cut, cut.

Never judge anyone by another's opinions. We all have different sides that we show to different people.

When you're climbing Mount Everest, nothing is easy. You just take one step at a time, never look back and always keep your eyes glued to the top.

Never let anyone shame you into doing anything you don't choose to do. Keep your identity.

Yes, there's one thing I do want. I want to be aware of the minutes and the seconds, and to make each one count.

Do not measure the number of tragedies you sustain, but to quantify the success you derive from them.

Everyone has an identity. One of their own, and one for show.

I don't think any novelist should be concerned with literature…literature should be left to essayists.

Acting is glamour but writing is hard work, so I'm going to be an actress.

I've got a library copy of Gone with the Wind, a quart of milk and all these cookies. Wow! What an orgy!

I wanted to write it long before I wrote Every Night, Josephine! I'd been thinking about it a long time.

With our own feathers, not by others' hands, Are we now smitten.

As you know now, Rush Limbaugh is the new face of the Republican Party, but they'll probably go with a different body.

Mathematics is concerned with "all possible worlds."

Antarctic symphony has a geometric relationship to the landscape. It's saying that this landscape and the minimal kind of, you know I'm talking like seeing ice, is visually kind of eerily minimal.

If you're not a tree hugger, then you're a what, a tree hater?

I'll be honest, I never saw myself making a ninja movie, never entertained the idea. I think ninja films can be quite cheesy unless you do them in feudal Japan.

I felt dull and flat and full of shattered visions.

It's a hard thing to explain to somebody who hasn't felt it, but the presence of death and danger has a way of bringing you fully awake. It makes things vivid.

Market prices for stocks fluctuate at great amplitudes around intrinsic value but, over the long term, intrinsic value is virtually always reflected at some point in market price.

The expectations you bring to meditation practice are often the greatest obstacles you will encounter.