My journals were a clearing house - a garbage can. Once I was writing seriously, I understood that this was the stuff that didn't belong in my work.

I try to remember that the job - as well as the plight, and the unexpected joy - of the artist is to embrace uncertainty, to be sharpened and honed by it.

It is in the thousands of days of trying, failing, sitting, thinking, resisting, dreaming, raveling, unraveling that we are at our most engaged, alert, and alive.

Writing has been my window-flung wide open to this magnificent, chaotic existence-my way of interpreting everything within my grasp.

Everything you need to know about life can be learned from a genuine and ongoing attempt to write

If I dismiss the ordinary—waiting for the special, the extreme, the extraordinary to happen - I may just miss my life.

I do whatever is necessary in order to maintain the equanimity we all need to withstand the disappointment and rejection that are the lot of every writer, no matter where we are in our careers.

The only graceful thing to do is recognize and embrace what is actually happening, rather than fight against it.

My desk is covered with talismans: pieces of rose quartz, wishing stones from a favorite beach.

How do we live the writer's life? There's only one simple answer: 'we write.'

If you are a writer or any kind of artist, if you change something as fundamental as where you live - the way you live - then I think you change the very instrument that is trying to make the art

Tell me, son... have you ever been intimidated by anyone?''Oh yes, ' said Thomas. 'I don't believe it. By whom?''By Our Lord... on the altar.

Do not despair. Do not give up. Look for the sunlight through the clouds.

Boomerang arrow, Kate -- It comes back to you in the end. Boomerang. Respect it.

Twas easier to disarm the god of strengthThan this Hippolytus, for HerculesYielded so often to the eyes of beauty, As to make triumph cheap.― Jean Racine, Phèdre

Most people will change, weather it's for the good or bad

If there was absolute freedom, people would run over babies and charge admission.

Too many girls follow the line of least resistance, but a good line is hard to resist.

I do think that it's always okay to show too little. People will still be interested. So why show too much?

I had always imagined that Cliché was a suburb of Paris, until I discovered it to be a street in Oxford.

I don't particularly consider myself just an artist. I'm a woman - I'm a human being.