There was not an awareness of pop culture in the household. There was a lot of respect for working hard, and for intellectual and professional achievement.

One good thing about being a woman is we haven't too many examples yet of what a genius looks like. It could be me.

We don't know the effects we have on each other, but we have them.

We tried not to smile, for smiling only encourages men to bore you and waste your time.

Maybe that's good to not feel like you have to keep up when there's so much to keep up with right now. It's bottomless.

There's so much writing I could have done and so many ideas that I had and so many things I wanted to work on that I didn't. I like too much having things in my head rather than doing the work.

To go on and on about your soul is to miss the whole point of life. I could say that with more certainty if I knew the whole point of life.

You have to know where the funny is, and if you know where the funny is, you know everything.

Writing fiction is a good way to inhabit other minds, if not other lives.

I do feel it. And I've felt it my whole life, that the supernatural has a role in the world.

Somehow I had turned myself into the worst thing in the world: I was just another man who wanted to teach me something!

Justice is about making them pay for [her] pain. Revenge is making them pay for yours.

I refuse to engage in an intellectual battle with an unarmed man.

If advertising encourages people to live beyond their means, so does matrimony.

I wish I could just accept that I'm not that good and not be shy about the fact that I'm not that professional.

The past is another land, and we cannot go to visit. So, if I say there were dragons, and men who rode upon their backs, who alive has been there and can tell me that I'm wrong?

We are puzzled and bewildered whenever we see suffering in this world because we have become accustomed to the mercy and the long-suffering of God. Amazing grace is no longer amazing to us.

Between '89 and '93 I was a wild child, a real nutter.

The poor have much to teach you. You have much to learn from them.

For me I want to know everything that goes on with my business but at the end of the day I just want to live, experience, be inspired and create music.