As a kid, I had a real fascination with perverse, off-color, and kind of risky things, and I also had a very sanctimonious Catholic, purist side.

I tend to foster drama via bleakness. If I want the reader to feel sympathy for a character, I cleave the character in half, on his birthday. And then it starts raining. And he's made of sugar.

What I regret most in my life are failures of kindness.

What I regret most in my life are failures of kindness. Those moments when another human being was there, in front of me, suffering, and I responded . . . sensibly. Reservedly. Mildly.

Do those things that incline you toward the big questions, and avoid the things that would reduce you and make you trivial.

Developing our sympathetic compassion is not only possible but the only reason for us to be here on earth.

According to me, your life is going to be a gradual process of becoming kinder and more loving. Hurry up. Speed it along. Start right now.

It's a big world, and I really like it.

Character is that sum total of moments we can't explain.

The generalizing writer is like the passionate drunk, stumbling into your house mumbling: I know I'm not being clear, exactly, but don't you kind of feel what I'm feeling?

Kindness, it turns out, is hard - it starts out all rainbows and puppy dogs, and expands to include . . . well, EVERYTHING.

Mother, who has an absolute belief that it is not the cards that one is dealt in life, it is how one plays them, is, by far, the highest card I was dealt.

Walt put everything he knew about communication with images into the park, so it was very familiar.

The principle of the Gothic architecture is infinity made imaginable.

I think certain people are the way they are for certain reasons that we can't necessarily judge without knowing.

You'll never find me in a gym.

The designs are more about the whole thing rather than the details, and if I were to do the big shapes I do, color would maybe be too much. Pink or red would push it all over the edge.

I am pretty specialized in people who pass over. Predictions are not my thing. Every medium is a psychic and every psychic is a medium. I do that occasionally but my specialty is spiritual pasts.

I am a woman with a calling for social struggle and public service.

God alert!" Blackjack yelled. "It's the wine dude! Mr. D sighed in exasperation. "The next person, or horse, who calls me the 'wine dude' will end up in a bottle of Merlot!

There is no way that we can predict the weather six months ahead beyond giving the seasonal average.