You can't be a good person when you're writing and a bad person to your husband or a bad friend.

Writing is a job, a talent, but it's also the place to go in your head. It is the imaginary friend you drink your tea with in the afternoon.

Part of it is living in Tennessee. I'm so out of the loop. And as a person, I'm out of the loop. I'm oblivious by nature.

Never be so focused on what you're looking for that you overlook the thing you actually find.

No matter how much we love a book, the experience of reading it isn't complete until we can give it to someone who will love it as much as we do

Only a few of us are going to be willing to break our own hearts by trading in the living beauty of imagination for the stark disappointment of words.

You are always someones favorite unfolding story

Just because things hadn't gone the way I had planned didn't necessarily mean they had gone wrong.

I can write for any magazine now, in any voice. I can do it in two hours, I could do it in my sleep, it's like writing a grocery list.

There can be something cruel about people who have had good fortune. They equate it with personal goodness.

Sometimes not having any idea where we’re going works out better than we could possibly have imagined.

A tree's beauty lies in its branches, but its strength lies in its roots.

Fruit forced is never half so sweet / As that comes quite in season.

Anyone can make them cry, but it takes a genius to make them laugh.

I'm planning to give up worrying. I want to, but I'm worried I won't be able to.

I must confess it was very unexpected and I am very startled at my metamorphosis into a chemist.

Go home and write / a page tonight. / And let that page come out of you - / Then, it will be true.

I don't really put my name to anything that I don't love and believe in, because there's no point.

Look, I'm not odd. I'm just trying to be an actor; not a movie star, an actor.

God alone is the author of all the motions in the world.

Rather than saying, 'My checking account is a wreck,' change it to 'I will learn how to track my spending and balance my checkbook.'