We never believe we're beautiful, no matter how many times we hear it. We never believe it until someone says it in the right way.

Like most-maybe all- writers, I learned to write by writing and, by example, by reading books.

All the elements of good writing depend on the writer's skill in choosing one word instead of another.

Reading was like eating alone, with that same element of bingeing.

When we humans speak, we are not merely communicating information but attempting to make an impression and achieve a goal.

What I love is how pissed off Jane Eyre is. She's in a rage for the whole novel and the payoff is she gets to marry this blind guy who's toasted his wife in the attic." -Angela Argo "Blue Angel

A lot of girls who turn into something remarkable start off as irrepressible, confident and a handful.

Like seeing a photograph of yourself as a child, encountering handwriting that you know was once yours but that now seems only dimly familiar can inspire a confrontation with the mystery of time.

I’ve always found that the better the book I’m reading, the smarter I feel, or, at least, the more able I am to imagine that I might, someday, become smarter.

I know a lot of Eastern Europeans, and because of what they have been through and what they have seen, they have an attitude where they are not easily fooled.

I can no more reread my own books than I can watch old home movies or look at snapshots of myself as a child. I wind up sitting on the floor, paralyzed by grief and nostalgia.

When you are truly happy you will realise that there is nothing to prove to people.

To love is to admire with the heart to admire is to love with the mind.

Don't take yourself too seriously. And take yourself as seriously as death itself.

In the class that I teach at one University, I stress that my one-word definition of politics is money. You can't name a subject matter that money doesn't touch.

Go out there into the glory of the woods. See God in every particle of them expressing glory and strength and power, tenderness and protection. Know that they are God expressing God made manifest.

Books are but dead bodies to you, and a library nothing but a catacomb!

Chloe?" "Yeah?" "I'd be worth the inhaler," he said, then forced himself to walk away.

I don't want to spend my life in my 40s feeling bad about being in my 40s, and then all of a sudden I'm 50, and I will have missed a whole decade!

Each generation must go further than the last or what's the use in it?

Am I a spaceman? Do I belong to a new race on earth, bred by men from outer space in embraces with earth women?