Praise and criticism seem to me to operate exactly on the same level. If you get a great review, it's really thrilling for about ten minutes. If you get a bad review, it's really crushing for ten minutes. Either way, you go on.

There can be something cruel about people who have had good fortune. They equate it with personal goodness.

If someone loves you for what you can do then it's flattering, but why do you love them? If someone loves you for who you are then they have to know you, which means you have to know them.

I will write my way into another life.

[I remember going] to a hotel gym at six o'clock in the morning, and the television was on, and it's some drama in which two men have clearly kidnapped a woman. They're interrogating her, and they put a plastic bag over her head. They're suffocating her, and I'm thinking, It's six o'clock in the morning! Why does anybody need to see this? How can I find the off switch?

I am the person who is appropriating stories that are not mine and turning them into a book.

She sang as if she was saving the life of every person in the room.