People gave me such a bad time about wanting a baby. I didn't want a baby, and I still don't. I wanted a dog.

I always feel it is a shortcoming of mine as a reader and as a writer that I frankly need to like somebody.

If you want to write and can't figure out how to do it, try this: Pick an amount of time to sit at your desk every day. Start with twenty minutes, say, and work up as quickly as possible to as much time as you can spare. Do you really want to write? Sit for two hours a day.

I think the best vacation is the one that relieves me of my own life for a while and then makes me long for it again.

He realized now he was only just beginning to see the full extent to which it was his destiny to follow, to walk blindly into fates he could never understand. In fate there was reward, in turning over one's heart to God there was a magnificence that lay beyond description. At the moment one is sure that all is lost, look at what is gained!

Society was nothing but a long, dull dinner party conversation in which one was forced to speak to one's partner on both the left and the right.

Some people need a huge amount of attention, and they are worthy of that attention, and they're still exhausting.