Why, I wonder, should the popularity of a news story matter to me? Does it mean it's a good story or just a seductive one?

Orchid hunting is a mortal occupation.

I think of myself as something of a connoisseur of procrastination, creative and dogged in my approach to not getting things done.

Living in a rural setting exposes you to so many marvelous things - the natural world and the particular texture of small-town life, and the exhilarating experience of open space.

You have to simply love writing, and you have to remind yourself often that you love it.

Libraries are what is best about us as a society: open, exciting, rich, informative, free, inclusive, engaging.

One of the very best reasons for having children is to be reminded of the incomparable joys of a snow day.

A snow day literally and figuratively falls from the sky, unbidden, and seems like a thing of wonder.

An ordinary life examined closely reveals itself to be exquisite and complicated and exceptional, somehow managing to be both heroic and plain.

There's a marvelous sense of mastery that comes with writing a sentence that sounds exactly as you want it to.

Even after I'd published three books and had been writing full-time for twenty years, my father continued to urge me to go to law school.

I've tried to make choices. You don't really trust me to.

Never tell yourself that it's going to be okay. Because more times than you know, it wont be okay. You'll crash and burn and your dreams will turn to ashes.

If you can react the same way to winning and losing that's a big accomplishment. That quality is important because it stays with you the rest of your life.

I had a hard time at Chelsea mainly because I was injured much of the time. Every time I recovered from one injury I seemed to get a new one and it set me back again.

The more perfect one becomes, the less he is inclined to speak of the imperfections of others.

I didn't become a drug addict because I always had to make a movie.

A friend is a beloved mystery; dearest always because he is not ourself, and has something in him which it is impossible for us to fathom. If it were not so, friendship would lose its chief zest.

If I kept my mouth shut, because I can make millions, that isn't doing nothing.

I was into opera as a kid - I'd play 'Carmen' and sing and dance. My mom signed me up for a theater group before preschool, and I never looked back.

My parents were French and Irish and our family even has Spanish blood-and I do so love the United States and consider myself part American.