As my wise friend Didi has more than once observed about life's passages, every departure entails an arrival elsewhere, every arrival implies a departure from afar.

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.

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

Not only is the experience of learning inspiring, the results are fulfilling.

I'd love to be able to be invisible, because I like to eavesdrop.

I came to this country when I was twelve years old because my parents wanted to give me new opportunities to succeed. President Obama wants everyone to have the chances I had.

The best thing we can do politically speaking is let Obamacare explode.

I think one reason I'm drawn to expansive syntax is that arias are so often exercises in extending language as a means of intensifying feeling.

Most of us have to be transplanted before we blossom.

Life should be taken ironically; otherwise, it becomes a tragedy.

Nature is bent on new beginning and death has not a chance of winning.

I live a soldier's life when I'm working. That's how it feels to me, except I've got a slightly greater chance of survival.

When we label anyone 'bad', we will have more trouble dealing with him than if we could have settled for a lesser label.