That's okay, " I said. "We're writers. We make things up.

You can learn a lot from your lovers, but-for the most part-you get to keep your friends longer, and you learn more from them.

Self-hatred is worse than loneliness.

Most places we leave in childhood grow less, not more, fancy.

It doesn't really matter who said it - it's so obviously true. Bevore you can write anything, you have to notice something.

The time to read Madame Bovary is when your romantic hopes and desires have crashed, and you will believe that your future relationships will have disappointing - even devastating - consequences.

Never trust a man with a lunatic wife in an attic, " Richard told me. "And anyone named Heathcliff should make you suspicious.

You can't possibly know that you're going to be a writer!" Miss Frost said. "It's not a career choice.

Small towns may revile you, but they have to keep you-they can't turn you away.

Novels are just another kind of cross-dressing, aren't they?

What we have once enjoyed deeply we can never lose. All that we love deeply becomes a part of us.

Issues arise not from expecting too much from people, but too little.

Enough research will tend to support your conclusions.

Real science is all about critically appraising the evidence for somebody else's position.

Do not be reactive and vengeful and if you look deeply into your anguish, you will see that it is the anguish of our wounded collective soul.

I didn't want to lift weights and get all big; I just wanted to get cut.

It was no great tragedy being Judy Garland's daughter. I had tremendously interesting childhood years - except they had little to do with being a child.

We have no sufficient strength of our own. All our sufficiency is of God. We should stir up ourselves to resist temptations in a reliance upon God's all-sufficiency and the omnipotence of his might.

The test of a work of art is, in the end, our affection for it, not our ability to explain why it is good.

It's always good to have a world that people don't know about - a world that hasn't yet been done. It's like treading on fresh snow. You're the first one there.