Writing novels is an essentially amateur activity.

Oh, that sound? I'm in the hot tub, reading a novel.

Many people, myself among them, feel better at the mere sight of a book.

Every first draft is perfect, because all a first draft has to do is exist.

I suspected that there were things he knew that I had been waiting all my life to learn.

In many ways, being honest about 'Huckleberry Finn' goes right to the heart of whether we can be honest about our heritage and our identity as Americans.

Even if my marriage is falling apart and my children are unhappy, there is still a part of me that says, 'God, this is fascinating!'

Take naps. Often new ideas come together when you are half asleep, but you have to train yourself to remember them.

Candy is my fuel. Ice cream, too.

But what truly horsey girls discover in the end is that boyfriends, husbands, children, and careers are the substitute-for horses

In every society, the artists will be the ones who set themselves up as contrary to whatever the society expects.

A mind possessed by unmade books, unwritten lines on empty hooks.

How many crimes have been committed for no other reason than that the perpetrator could not bear being in the wrong!

We should all start to live before we get too old. Fear is stupid. So are regrets.― Marilyn Monroe

The antithesis between a technical and a liberal education is fallacious. There can be no adequate technical education which is not liberal, and no liberal education which is not technical.

The Bible says that love is a responsibility. We are commanded to love. God doesn't ask us if we feel like it, He tells us in His Word that it is our responsibility to love.

How easy it was to make people happy, when you didn't want or need anything from them.

I've come to realize that protecting freedom of choice in our everyday lives is essential to maintaining a healthy civil society.

Your job, with all that mental training and suffering, is just to push your line of breaking so far your opponent can't find it.

A carpenter is known by his chips.

Hurried business is bad business.