The secret of flight is this -- you have to do it immediately, before your body realizes it is defying the laws.

You cannot find peace by avoiding life.

She could have had a life as potent and dangerous as literature itself.

There is a beauty in the world, though it's harsher than we expect it to be.

we become the stories we tell ourselves

I was not ladylike, nor was I manly. I was something else altogether. There were so many different ways to be beautiful.

Language in fiction is made up of equal parts meaning and music. The sentences should have rhythm and cadence, they should engage and delight the inner ear.

I suspect any serious reader has a first great book, just the way anybody has a first kiss.

One always has a better book in one's mind than one can manage to get onto paper.

Take me with you. I want a doomed love. I want streets at night, wind and rain, no one wondering where I am.

She is overtaken by a sensation of unbeing. There is no other word for it.

A bird does not fly because of the wind around it, but because of the strength within it.

I thought I would be a sports announcer. All I was was a curious kid who wanted to be on the radio.

I think public service is a calling and you do it as long as the things that brought you into the office can continue getting you up in the morning and as long as there's still work to get done.

It is only when You really STEP OUT of Your comfort zone that You GROW.

I have not given it [synagogue] up. Christianity is the completion of the synagogue, for the synagogue was a promise, and Christianity is the fulfillment of that promise.

In the action of no-action (wu-wei), a cardinal aspect of the true creative process is set forth. In wu-wei, the mind is silenced and the work is allowed to express itself.

I'm always most interested in writing about things that I don't understand.

We face neither East nor West: we face forward.

The Photograph is concerned with the power that the past has to interfere with the present: the time bomb in the cupboard.

I think it was wonderful when Princess Di died so that everyone could cry in unison. I thought that the crying together was the most powerful gift that she gave in her death.