We didn’t want to admit it then, but we were friends. Best friends.

It’s not like I planned it. I never woke up from some rosy dream and said, “Okay, world, today I’m gonna spaz.

She also understood there was a hole in her heart where her son should be, that she was a wicked, selfish woman for wishing him back.

She was no stripper with a heart of gold, that was for sure. A heart of steel, more like.

You’re saying, “What the hell am I gonna do with her?” You’re saying, “Shit, did she take her pills?” You’re saying, “Once upon a time, I used to have a little girl.

Writing is a solitary business. It’s just you and your characters and a blank page you need to fill.

I long for some connection, to the real and those who love them, and hope that my fiction can reach beyond the veil, that I might touch someone and make them feel something…or something.

A woman brings so much more to the world than birth, for she can birth discovery, intelligence, invention, art, just as well as any man.

Okay, I’ll just jump right out and say it. I have anxiety issues.

Just five minutes, God, I chant like some hostage negotiator on the brink of a resolution. Five minutes alone. Please, please. Please.

When I was twenty-something, I asked my father, “When did you start feeling like a grownup?” His response: “Never.

Bitterness is anger gone sour, an attitude of deep discontent that poisons our souls and destroys our peace.

I frowned at him. "Isn't sarcasm the opiate of the masses?""You're thinking of religion, " he replied. "Sarcasm is the Xanax of the morally bereft.

hay he's a great writer and i like him a lot

I don't have a gardener because I enjoy pulling weeds. It's hard to explain but there is something fulfilling about pulling out a weed and knowing that you got all the roots.

I ignore all the doomsaying nonsense. I'm in a business where the odds of ever earning a living are a zillion to one, so I know itcan be done. I know the impossible can become possible.

I usually just wear black so my shoes and my socks are my rays of sunshine.

The President reminded us that the war in Iraq is a central battlefield in the war on terror that began the morning of September the 11th.

How is it having more control if there are young people stifled the opportunities that we had?

It wasn't good for my nerves, that kind of work - a fireman. I've got high blood pressure. I get upset easily. I don't think that was a proper career alternative for me.

Poetry is the statement of a relation between a man and the world