I like European and South American literature, but mostly I read nonfiction.

Feminism now seems to be defined as success is defined: as being as good at capitalism as men are. I feel very estranged from it.

I understand maybe some people are more impressionable than my hard, cynical self, but maybe they need to figure out how to be less of that.

I was twenty-one when I was hired by Planned Parenthood. It was my first work experience outside of either temping or working for my father at his store.

Once you leave, you're no longer of that country, but you are never actually of the country that you go to, and if you go back, you're not anywhere. You never belong to anything.

American culture never necessarily made sense to me, but they should warn you: leaving comes with a huge sense of alienation that never goes away.

Talk to people who know more than you. I feel like we're in this stupid sea of opinion, like "My opinion is valid because it's mine and I have it."

You don't have to go to New York and you don't have to go to LA or London. Go somewhere cheap. Go somewhere with free art museums and then just go to art museums.

Go to a place and just send out emails. That's my entire life. I go to countries and I ask, "Who would I know who lives here?" Not even do I know, but who exists and is on the planet.

There's this resistance to actually talking to people who are smarter than you about things and I don't know why that is.

I knew my motivations for going to each place and what I was looking for. If I don't do that then I generally don't write about my travels.

When someone comes to you, let them feel like they are in your universe where they belong.

God allows us, through thoughts, ideas, words and revelations, to imagine things in ourconscious mind that He has already created in the invisible spirit realm.

Never in my life had I felt so tangibly and with such astonishment that hate, by passing successively through comprehension, mercy, and sympathy, can be transformed into love.

Give way to the Better if way to the Better there be It exacts a full look at the Worst.

... because one kingdom goes to war with another, it does not mean all citizens of that kingdom agree with it. It is not always they have a choice.

These are thy glorious works, Parent of good!

In a word I was a pioneer, and therefore had to blaze my own trail.

What I expect from writers-and from myself as a writer-is to articulate a complex view of things. To incite us to be more compassionate. To orchestrate our mourning. And to celebrate ecstasy.

Sometimes an alien would stand with a moose, not because of solidarity, but because of accidentally doing it.

Churchill says the Government had to choose between war and shame. They chose shame. They will get war, too.