Reading fiction is important. It is a vital means of imagining a life other than our own, which in turn makes us more empathetic beings.

Writing is a job, a talent, but it's also the place to go in your head. It is the imaginary friend you drink your tea with in the afternoon.

Part of it is living in Tennessee. I'm so out of the loop. And as a person, I'm out of the loop. I'm oblivious by nature.

Never be so focused on what you're looking for that you overlook the thing you actually find.

No matter how much we love a book, the experience of reading it isn't complete until we can give it to someone who will love it as much as we do

Only a few of us are going to be willing to break our own hearts by trading in the living beauty of imagination for the stark disappointment of words.

You are always someones favorite unfolding story

Just because things hadn't gone the way I had planned didn't necessarily mean they had gone wrong.

I can write for any magazine now, in any voice. I can do it in two hours, I could do it in my sleep, it's like writing a grocery list.

There can be something cruel about people who have had good fortune. They equate it with personal goodness.

Sometimes not having any idea where we’re going works out better than we could possibly have imagined.

There but for the... good choices I've made, genetics, psychological conditioning, and 10K random elements, go I.

In a perfectly designed world —one with no history— we would not have to suffer everything from hemorrhoids to cancer.

The virtuous man delights in this world and he delights in the next

Nothing is particularly hard if you divide it into small jobs.

To understand the nature of the people one must be a prince, and to understand the nature of the prince, one must be of the people.

There are distinct duties of a poet laureate. I plan a reading series at the Library of Congress and advise the librarian. The rest is how I want to promote poetry.

What goes 0-300 in less than 2 seconds? Your mother on a scale.

I have very talented people dress me and put my makeup on, stuff like that. But I do love that look, and I think it's maybe because I grew up on that old glamour.

A word to the wise isn't as good as a word from the wise.