Twenty-five, he was. Twenty-five tomorrow. Some years the snow had melted for his birthday, but not this year, and so it had been a long winter full of cows.

Oh, that sound? I'm in the hot tub, reading a novel.

Many people, myself among them, feel better at the mere sight of a book.

Every first draft is perfect, because all a first draft has to do is exist.

I suspected that there were things he knew that I had been waiting all my life to learn.

In many ways, being honest about 'Huckleberry Finn' goes right to the heart of whether we can be honest about our heritage and our identity as Americans.

Even if my marriage is falling apart and my children are unhappy, there is still a part of me that says, 'God, this is fascinating!'

Take naps. Often new ideas come together when you are half asleep, but you have to train yourself to remember them.

Candy is my fuel. Ice cream, too.

But what truly horsey girls discover in the end is that boyfriends, husbands, children, and careers are the substitute-for horses

In every society, the artists will be the ones who set themselves up as contrary to whatever the society expects.

My life felt so cluttered and obstructed that I could hardly breathe. I inhabited a closed, concentrated world, airless and without exits.

Dreams are the sources of action the meeting and the end a resting place among the flight of things.

Do not call for black power or green power. Call for brain power.

Bring me a horse and I am yours forever

We are torn between nostalgia for the familiar and an urge for the foreign and strange. As often as not, we are homesick most for the places we have never known.

You strive to have a good heart. But what is a heart? Just a chunk of flesh that a dog can eat.

Of what use is a fortune to me, if I cannot use it? [Lat., Quo mihi fortunam, si non conceditur uti?]

We're all bombarded with so many dietary messages that it's hard to find time to sort through all this information, but we do have time to take a look at our kids' plates.

I had learned to dwell with pleasure, as a beloved daydream, on the thought of the separation of these elements.

I don't like new bands. I don't want to be one of those pathetic old men in their forties who knows exactly what 18-year-olds are into.