When I'm sitting at the desk not being able to write line one, it's silence and despair! It's not so easy to put the pen to the legal pad or type the first sentence on the computer screen.

You see a lot of smart guys with dumb women, but you hardly ever see a smart woman with a dumb guy.

Advice is what we ask for when we already know the answer but wish we didn't.

And the trouble is, if you don't risk anything, you risk even more.

I have accepted fear as a part of life - specifically the fear of change... I have gone ahead despite the pounding in the heart that says: turn back.

The stones themselves are thick with history, and those cats that dash through the alleyways must surely be the ghosts of the famous dead in feline disguise.

Everyone has talent. What is rare is the courage to follow the talent to the dark place where it leads.

Ambivalence is a wonderful tune to dance to. It has a rhythm all its own.

Take your life in your own hands, and what happens? A terrible thing: no one to blame.

How wonderful to have someone to blame! How wonderful to live with one's nemesis! You may be miserable, but you feel forever in the right.

My generation was not only maligned in book reviews and attacked in graduate school but we lived to see our adored and adorable daughters wonder why feminism had become a dirty word.

Go with your bad self.

Hope is in the name of God, the name of our Lord Jesus Christ. Hope is when you compare your suffering to the infinite, immeasurable love and grace of God.

I'm an audience member too, man. I hate shitty sequels.

The Republicans have a high Beady-Eyed Self-Righteous Scary Borderline Loon Quotient, as evidenced by Phyllis Schlafly, Pat Robertson, the entire state of Utah, etc.

I really appreciate it when people say "no" to me. I want people to understand that I'm totally supportive of what it is they're trying to do as long as we're all on the same team.

gospel singing ... is the rawest, sweetest, uninhibited and exquisite sounds a person can make or hear. It isn't music, it's an entire experience you feel and live. A sound to rise you up again.

The reader can't take much for granted in a fiction where the scenery can eat the characters.

I'm very happy because I won a lot. I've won races and lived in a world that just gave me joy, so I remember it very positively.

Death then, being the way and condition of life, we cannot love to live if we cannot bear to die.

If the present tries to sit in judgment of the past, it will lose the future.