When we talk about God, I think what most of us mean is some greater thing, some higher power that can help us access our own strength or give us strength.

The strangest thing about strange things is that they're only strange when you hear about them or think about them later, but never when you're living them.

I hum some secret place into being, thinking of this other me, the one that only I can see, a girl called She, who is not We, a girl who I will never be.

Write,' she said, 'as if you'll never be read. That way you'll be sure to tell the truth.

I'm not alone in having obese people in my circle and in my family. I have loved morbidly obese people, and I don't approach obesity with revulsion or judgment but with empathy and compassion.

Art isn't a product. It's an experience

The city, no matter how small, is corrupt and unrepentant, while the sun shines brighter in the country, making people more wholesome.

the only thing left to do is love

If heaven is tolerant and writers are allowed (bunch of liars though they are), I wonder if they gather for coffee to ponder the prose they should have written instead.

How cruel it must be for a man to live past his soul.

Winning the lottery is winning the lottery. It's highly unlikely and very unusual.

The sad fact is, because we've had a failed policy and failed leadership, now we're having to rely on Russians and the Iranians to go into Syria to fight and destroy ISIS.

I was one of five very clever kids, the other kids were cleverer than I was and still are and are very achieving. The girls were always first at everything and I was always 101st!

I grew up in Florida and went to school there, and ended up going to University of Central Florida.

Sometimes memory tricks you. Sometimes beauty is best when it's distant.

I've always loved books. My mother told me that before I could talk, I'd babble in my crib as I turned the pages of my little cloth books, apparently telling stories to go along with the pictures.

it requires a great deal more generosity to take than to give.

I eventually realized that good things wouldnt happen to me if I didnt make the right choices.

Impotence, fetishism, bisexuality, and bondage are all facts of life, and our fiction should reflect that.

Institutions are essential in order to preserve the achievement of the past, but the original creative impulse in every age comes from the amateur, the rebel, the breaker of idols.

Many things that come into the world are not looked into. The individual says 'My crowd doesn't run that way.' I say, don't run with crowds.