The scolding voice is her own, so abrasive and quick, yet so powerless to move her.

This is why I read novels: so I can escape my own unrelenting monologue.

Write the book you want to read, the one you cannot find.

Open a book this minute and start reading. Don’t move until you’ve reached page fifty. Until you’ve buried your thoughts in print. Cover yourself with words. Wash yourself away. Dissolve.

Go for long walks, indulge in hot baths, Question your assumptions, be kind to yourself, live for the moment, loosen up, scream, curse the world, count your blessings, Just let go, Just be.

There are chapters in every life which are seldom read and certainly not aloud.

Bookish people, who are often maladroit people, persist in thinking they can master any subtlety so long as it's been shaped into acceptable expository prose.

nothing she did or said was quite what she meant but still her life could be called a monument shaped in a slant of available light and set to the movement of possible music

Anyone's childhood can be an act of disablement if rehearsed and replayed and squinted at in a certain light. . .

Words are our life. We are human because we use language. So I think we are less human when we use less language.

The recounting of a life is a cheat...even our own stories are obscenely distorted.

What's missing is not money, but a national sense of urgency.

If God could run out of grace, He would’ve for me by now. And yet every morning I wake up, He says, “There is more, there is still more.

Men? One never knows where to find them. The wind blows them away. They have no roots, and that makes their life very difficult.

I anticipate the Day when to command Respect in the remotest Regions it will be sufficient to say I am an American.

I don't feel I'm a diva in any way, but, like, I just can't bring myself to reuse eyelashes. I think it's gross. And so I only use them one time. Is that bad? I feel like it's bad!

Pedagogical romances leave the mentor disgruntled, the pupil confused.

Unequal group rights, the politics of redistribution and a Constitution whose meaning varies with changeable coalitions are a recipe for civil war.

Be a voice for the future and a voice for the planet.

The more distant and distinct the relationship between two realities that are brought together, the more powerful the image.

Being a powerful woman who also exhibits great warmth is an incredible feat because people think that to be powerful you have to be cold, and you don't.