Being with him was like being alone underwater - everything was slow; nothing counted; I could not be harmed; I would feel dry and cold when I resurfaced.

Spelling is a way to make words safe, at least for now, until another technology appears to soften attacks launched from the mouth.

It amazes me that parents are allowed to raise kids. There's so much power and often very little accountability.

It's lonely to listen to the pleasure of others, not that I've made a habit of that kind of eavesdropping. There's joy and passion in the next room, in the next bed, but it's not yours.

In some sense, prose fiction is just a way of unlocking a space. If I can unlock the space, it comes out and it's vivid, I find that I care about it, and it's part of me.

Eventually you stop paying attention to your own feelings when there's nothing to be done about them.

I'm attracted to how fraught the parent-child relationship is, swerving so easily between love and hostility, with almost no plausible way to end, unless someone dies.

Suspense left my life a long time ago, now it has returned. I do not care for it.

A self needed to spill out sometimes, a body should show evidence of what the hell went on inside it.

A misspelled word is probably an alias for some desperate call for aid, which is bound to fail.

To refrain from storytelling is perhaps one of the highest forms of respect we can pay. Those people, with no stories to circle them, can die without being misunderstood.

Speak in such a way that others love to listen to you. Listen in such a way that others love to speak to you.

There are many examples of female leaders who are not afraid to take responsibility and openly face the challenges in the worst situations.

In short, realism reveals. Where we thought nothing worthy of notice, it shows everything to be rife with significance.

You have to know one big thing and stick with it. The leaders who had one very big idea and one very big commitment. This permitted them to create something. Those are the ones who leave a legacy.

God never imposes a duty without giving time to do it.

Observe any meetings of people, and you will always find their eagerness and impetuosity rise or fall in proportion to their numbers.

I don't think anybody says to Coetzee or Dostoyevsky or Kafka, "Your characters aren't likeable." It's not about your character winning a popularity contest. That's not the writer's job.

I myself have 12 hats and each one represents a different personality. Why just be yourself.

I do find myself at the moment, due to the success of School of Rock, to be on people's radar a little.

Never was so much false arithmetic employed on any subject, as that which has been employed to persuade nations that it is in their interest to go to war.