Sometimes love does not have the most honorable beginnings, and the endings, the endings will break you in half. It's everything in between we live for.

But these last months had turned him around and now Gen saw there could be as much virtue in letting go of what you knew as there had ever been in gathering new information. He worked as hard at forgetting as he had ever worked to learn.

You should not have assault rifles in your home.

You can't be a good person when you're writing and a bad person to your husband or a bad friend. You can't be a jerk in order to be a good writer. You can't say, "I'm too busy writing to be political." You are one person. You are the same person in every aspect of your life, and you have to be a responsible person in every aspect of your life.

Staying within the world of a novel gives us the ability to be quiet and alone, two skills that are disappearing faster than the polar icecaps.

If a person has never given writing a try, they assume that a brilliant idea is hard to come by. But really, even if it takes some digging, ideas are out there. Just open your eyes and look at the world. Writing the ideas down, it turns out, is the real trick.

It's easier to love a woman when you can't understand a word she's saying.