The hardest piece of nonfiction I ever wrote isn't anywhere close to the easiest piece of fiction I never wrote.

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.

Don't lose the one who fights with you to be with you!

You know something is wrong when the government declares opening someone else’s mail is a felony but your internet activity is fair game for data collecting.

I have come here only to share the voices and dreams of our children - because they are all our children.

Sometimes you just can't hear yourself. Maybe ears are too close to the mouth.

Our goal is to defend the American people, and to eliminate Iraq's weapons of mass destruction, and to liberate the Iraqi people.

My kids are really easy. I often worry that they're too easy to deal with. They're really nice people.

You must attain a neurological and biological serenity in chaos. You cannot let yourself be sabotaged by adrenaline.

Some things are too big to be seen; some emotions are too huge to be felt.

Personally I have always liked boys, but if it's a girl, marvelous, because I was raised among women.

I have pleasures, and passions, but the joy of life is gone. I am going under: the morgue yawns for me. I go and look at my zinc-bed there. After all, I had a wonderful life, which is, I fear, over.