. . . he felt himself entering a moment so real he could only run toward it, shouting.

You cannot find peace by avoiding life.

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

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

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.

The majority of astronauts have to change their eyeglasses while in space. They bring eyeglasses with them and typically change a few months into the mission.

There are a lot of roles in Shakespeare, basically. If I feel that the script is a movie, I would be interested in doing any role of Shakespeare's.

Last night we had Bill Clinton, the former president. Security was as tight as Governor Christie's yoga pants.

He's looking for the president's kidnapped daughter; everybody he calls on to help him is busy, but lo and behold, you look across the room, and I'm waiting for that action.

Don't go looking at me like that because you'll wear your eyes out.

The latest authors, like the most ancient, strove to subordinate the phenomena of nature to the laws of mathematics.

You got to use what you got to get just what you want.

Fear not; calm will follow the storm, and perhaps soon.

I heard a bird so sing, Whose music, to my thinking, pleased the king.

Tis said, fantastic ocean doth enfold The likeness of whate'er on land is seen.