That's writing for you: when you make space for passion, it doesn't turn up.

Hope is like one of those orchids that grows around toxic waste: lovely in itself - and an assertion, if you like, of indefatigable good - but a sure sign that something nasty lies underneath.

As writers go, I have a skin of average thickness. I am pleased by a good review, disappointed by a bad. None of it penetrates far enough to influence the thing I write next.

How can there be so many mothers in the world but so little sense of what it might be to become one?

The creativity of childhood was often surrendered amid feelings of unworthiness. So the idea that ­others are demanding to be given it back - to be "taught" - is disturbing.

Childhood, after all, is not an ending, but rather a state full of potent curiosity.

Even if they knew the truth of their own feelings, most mothers would be socially and emotionally incapable of revealing it.

Honest criticism, I suppose, has its place. But honest writing is infinitely more valuable.

Hope is one of those no-win-no-fee things, and although it needs some encouragement to survive, its existence doesn't necessarily prove anything.

People are least aware of others when demonstrating their own power over them.

Reality might be described as the eternal equipoise of positive and negative.

Virtue is an angel but she is a blind one and must ask of Knowledge to show her the pathway that leads to her goal.

A rusty nail placed near a faithful compass, will sway it from the truth, and wreck the argosy.

We live by faith in a prayer-hearing, soul-converting , soul-sanctifyin g, soul-restoring, soul-comforting God.

It was like pulling teeth trying to get me to L.A. I hated it for so long, but now I've got this great life here.

I still consider it a summer job, though. So, I try to maintain that summer job as long as I can. But it's exciting to be able to have the opportunity to do things I always dreamed of as a kid.

I didn't use a phone until I was 14.

I'm not real big on repentence ... I like revenge better.

Many paths lead to the Door of Enlightenment. Beware those that proclaim there is but one.

For me, it is important to win titles and for that I need to work hard, stay healthy and be able to compete. The rest, I always say, it comes.

It's hard to separate art from artists so transgender musicians will never be mainstream until transpeople are looked at as notable as maybe redheads.