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

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.

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 don't like hiking with convicts carrying machetes.

I think a lot of people would rather have more control over their life than less.

I have done lots of music projects in my life and some of them I am more proud of than others.

Everybody understands that acting is a really difficult job. It's hard work. You've got to get dressed up, you've got to hang around with beautiful women. It's difficult. It's a problem.

Forgiveness is not generally something that you find as a coin to be used by politicians.

It's so easy to become a grumbler, someone who condemns and carps at everything on principle and sees an ulterior motive behind it.

[Dalton] Trumbo wrote this incredible pamphlet, almost on the level of Tom Paine's 'Common Sense,' called 'The Time of the Toad.' It's an exquisitely written treatise regarding the black list era.

The life in which nothing happens goes the fastest, because it has no landmarks.

A deaf and dumb person who sees two men in conversation - may nevertheless understand from the attitudes and gestures of the speakers, how well their discussion is getting along.

Selling a book or story has never become absolutely automatic for me.

I sobered up and I got to thinking, girl, you ain't much fun since I quit drinking.