Just … isn’t giving up allowed sometimes? Isn’t it okay to say, ‘This really hurts, so I’m going to stop trying’?

Sometimes writing is running downhill, your fingers jerking behind you on the keyboard the way your legs do when they can’t quite keep up with gravity.

To really be a nerd, she'd decided, you had to prefer fictional worlds to the real one.

I don’t trust anybody. Not anybody. And the more that I care about someone, the more sure I am they’re going to get tired of me and take off.

Smiling is confusing, she thought. This is why I don’t do it.

Months are different in college, especially freshman year. Too much happens. Every freshman month equals six regular months—they're like dog months.

I don't want to do anything. I don't even want to start this day because then I'll just be expected to finish it.

Emergency dance party--go away.

I don't like hello. It makes me sound like I have dementia, like I've never heard a phone ring before and I don't know what's supposed to happen next. Hello?

You flirt with everything." She could tell that her eyes were popping-- her eyeballs actually felt cold around the edges. "You flirt with old people and babies and everybody in between.

She was tired of being the one who cried.

I am so thankful to MOTHER for making my ordinary life extraordinary. MOTHER - Multiplied Opportunities Through Her Endless Reinvention.

Stay calm and aggressive.

It never occurred to any Enlightenment figure in the eighteenth century that law was not preferable to man.

Everyone has some dysfunction in their families. They have to deal with it. You don't walk away if you love someone. You help the person.

Women should not have to adopt masculine traits in order to succeed. You should be able to stay as a woman, and in tune with your femininity, and still be equal.

Growth in any individual European country has to be the result of policies for growth pursued in that country consistent with budgetary discipline.

My good friend, the poet Kofi Natambu, once said, "Contradiction is how we operate."

Maybe that is why young people make success. They don't know enough.

I mean, Scorsese's a genius, and that's one way of shooting.

Do you want to be successful? Nurture your talent.