Yes, writing is essential to me. It's my way of living in the world.

Above all, in my anger, I was sad. Isn't that always the way, that at the heart of the fire is a frozen kernel of sorrow that the fire is trying -- valiantly, fruitlessly -- to eradicate.

I've discovered over the years that the simplest explanation is almost always the right one; and that hunger of one kind or another - desire, by another name - is the source of almost every sorrow.

That's so her. You know, torn between Big Ideas and a party. She's always been that way.

To my mind, Guernica is the most important online intellectual and literary journal in America today.

Geniuses have the shortest biographies.

It doesn't ever occur to you, as you fashion your mask so carefully, that it will grow into your skin and graft itself, come to seem irremovable.

We read to find life, in all its possibilities.

I was funny -- ha-ha, not peculiar. It was a modest currency, like pennies: pedestrian, somewhat laborious, but a currency nonetheless. I was funny, in public, most often at my own expense.

I wanted to write a voice that for me, as a reader, had been missing from the chorus: the voice of an angry woman.

The more accurately one can illuminate a particular human experience, the better the work of art.

It is not a Buddhist approach to say that if everyone practiced Buddhism, the world would be a better place. Wars and oppression begin from this kind of thinking.

To teach is to learn twice.

COMMENDATION n. The tribute that we pay to achievements that resembles but do not equal our own.

The vote is a power, a weapon of offense and defense, a prayer.

You told me love was fickle and fleeting.

Acquisition means life to miserable mortals.

Today, you've got hedge fund billionaires aligned with Karl Rove, running ads against me to try to get Democrats to vote for you [Bernie Sanders]. I know this game. I'm going to stop this game.

There is no question that we must do more to secure our borders - but how we go about securing them is also important.

To be enslaved to oneself is the heaviest of all servitudes.-

Waking up to you is like... presents on Christmas morning." His mouth curved. "For your convenience, I'm already unwrapped. Batteries not required.