Twenty-year-olds have a kind of emotional idealism about relationships and about the world that enables them to say, 'No, you lied to me. Goodbye.' When they see wickedness, they walk away.

Your numbness is something perhaps you cannot help. It is what the world has done to you. But your coldness. That is what you do to the world.

This is what happened in love. One of you cried a lot and then both of you grew sarcastic.

For love to last, you had to have illusions or have no illusions at all. But you had to stick to one or the other. It was the switching back and forth that endangered things.

Usually she ordered a cup of coffee and a cup of tea, as well as a brownie, propping up her sadness with chocolate and caffeine so that it became an anxiety.

A short story is a love affair, a novel is a marriage. A short story is a photograph; a novel is a film.

One had to build shelters. One had to make pockets and live inside them.

They had, finally, the only thing anyone really wants in life: someone to hold your hand when you die.

The only really good piece of advice I have for my students is, 'Write something you'd never show your mother or father. And you know what they say? I could never do that!'

She was unequal to anyone's wistfulness. She had made too little of her life. Its loneliness shamed her like a crime.

If one publishes, then one is creating a public record of Learning to Write.

When I look back at where I come from, I realize it's for a good reason that God changed my life.

For my brothers it was easy to think about the future. They can be anything they want. But for me it was hard and for that reason I wanted to become educated and empower myself with knowledge.

When you believe in what you're doing and use your imagination and initiative, you can make a difference.

When blackness was a virtue and the road was full of mud, I came in from the wilderness, a creature void of form.

She tried to swallow, to take a breath, but her eyes met his, and there was nothing but aching intensity in his gaze. And she was drawn in, swept away.

A lot of songs I sang to crowds to get their reaction. That's how I knew they'd hit.

Initially we performed in halls with capacities of 1,000.

Educate us with your media machine, tell me what to dream.

Believe you can do it and you are halfway there

What is new is not always true, and what is true is not always new.