To be early is to be on time, to be on time is to be late, to be late is to be forgotten.

Sometimes you regret the things you do, but they're over and done. Regretting the things you didn't do is tougher because they're still out there, haunting you with the what ifs.

When you peered into the windows of someone else's life, you could only guess what was going on.

Guilt and no guilt: these were the worst things. The only thing worse than the guilt was the fear of getting caught.

I am a summer person.

Iowa City is okay as Midwestern cities go, but theres no food, no culture, no ocean.

For graduate school I ended up going to the University of Iowa, which is, of course, the best graduate writing program in the country.

One is never too young for fine literature . . .

...Every life contains a novel.

Nothing was a natural predator of productive fiction writing like the cell phone. Ditto the laptop. As she had well learned, the laptop could destroy a day.

Meredith immersed herself in the novels. For some reason, fiction hit on the meaning of life so much more concisely than real life itself did.

Try your best... Do your best... Sow the best and reap the best! The best is right in you... Don't hide it and give out the worst. We are looking right up to you!

There is no formula for generating the authentic warmth of love. It cannot be copied.

I love to hang out with boys - I've got brothers - but I'm a girl's girl, in all the ways you can be girlie. Nails and chats and gossip magazines and reality TV and pop culture.

And I finished college because I thought how much it would upset my parents if I didnt.

We tend to view confidence as a product of accomplishment rather than part of the process that leads there. But supremely confident people were confident long before they achieved anything.

Energy is eternal delight; and from the earliest times human beings have tried to imprison it in some durable hieroglyphic. It is perhaps the first of all the subjects of art.

Put your faith in what you most believe in.

I had great memories of growing up in a working class estate. I remember it being sunny all the time. So we're putting that on screen. It's not people wallowing in degradation.

Every single one of us possesses the strength to attempt something he isn't sure he can accomplish.

It doesn't matter what product or service you're offering; there is unlimited ability to improve the quality of anything.