You turn your life into a work of art in order to redeem the ordinariness - a condition you are stuck with.

Those are the two things: a sense of loving and being loved, and being creative - that is what life is made up of, and what literature reminds us of.

I think it is an important question of our lives - what is the meaning of literature to us as humans.

Wonder - the sensation of being whisked out of time and space...to be bathed in ... epiphanous delight.

It is terribly important to maintain a national identity in a way that it probably wasn't before.

A form of art that I like is portraiture. I've been thinking about portraiture, and its relationship to writing and literature, biography and autobiography, and so that will be my next thing.

[Anton] Chekhov is the most produced playwright in the world after Shakespeare, and most of the people in my sort of audience would have seen at least one of his plays.

Every time you watch a performance in the theatre, you know that this is just for you, and will never be the same again. It is quite exciting for me.

The Odyssey and Iliad say things about the human condition in ways we should re-acquaint ourselves with, and use as a prism to interpret though.

In the theatre, you are in love with what is on the stage, with the moment. You just don't get that with movies or videos, or TV, where you know that what you are seeing is repeatable.

One has to choose a word in English. If you want to be eligible for a literary prize you have to designate it as something.

I am made of beauty. I notice beauty all around me every day. I am beautifully blessed!

In order to fight off fear we must become it. When we become one with fear we become one with opposite of fear, peace. They are two halves to the same object.

I'm still not sure if I was a victim or not... and if I was, who was my abuser?

Every time you buy something consider it a vote of confidence in the company that produced it.

You're always cursing, you're always praying and you're always making love. It ain't do-re-mi-fa-so-la-ti-do.

I’m so glamorous even in pajamas.

As a writer, I am constantly aware that I take my life in my hands with everything I do and say. It's just a fact of life. For me it always has been.

I'm just happy that 'Idol' producers gave me a shot on the show and to be able to show who I really was, because I feel like I'm every single woman.

Living a life of faith means never knowing where you are being led.

Happiness is the sense that one matters. Happiness is an abiding enthusiasm. Happiness is single-mindedness. Happiness is whole-heartedness. Happiness is a by-product. Happiness is faith.