I had a mother I could only seem to please with verbal accomplishments of some sort or another. She read constantly, so I read constantly. If I used words that might have seemed surprising at a young age, she would recognize that and it would please her.

I exaggerated even before I began to exaggerate, because it's true — nothing is ever quite as bad as it could be.

What I think," Chatty says, "is that if a man loves a woman more than a woman loves a man, then they're even.

I know that homes burn and that you should think what to save before they start to. Not because, in the heat of it, everything looks as valuable as everything else. But, because nothing looks worth the bother, not even your life.

I know when a story is finished when there is not a single thing more I can think to do to it. And since I know at the start what the last line will be, I know when I've reached that point as logically as I can that it's finished. As for the rewriting-it's not foolproof, of course, but if you're honest about having thought of every possibility and you still come back to what you have, what more can you do?

I want to know everything about you, so I tell you everything about myself.

The only time the word baby doesn't scare me is the time that it should, when it is what a man calls me.