I'm never a fan of the sociopathic kind of reviewing, people who are sort of self-immolating and have social problems or whatever, and let it out in literary-criticism form. I just feel like book reviewing should be respectful and calm and not filled with bile.

The raising of a child is the building of a cathedral. You can't cut corners.

We feel that to reveal embarrassing or private things, we have given someone something, that, like a primitive person fearing that a photographer will steal his soul, we identify our secrets, our past and their blotches, with our identity, that revealing our habits or losses or deeds somehow makes one less of oneself.

When we pass by another person without telling them we love them it’s cruel and wrong and we all know this.

All we really want is for no one to have a boring life, to be impressive, so we can be impressed. ~ on the friends we choose.

For years I feared the opening of every elevator, half-convinced that from the opened doors would come a bullet, for me, shot by a man in a tan trenchcoat. I have no idea why I feared this, expected it to happen. I even knew how I would react to this bullet coming from the elevator door, what word I would say. That word was: Finally.

I can remember exactly where I sat when my teacher first read Roald Dahl's 'James and the Giant Peach'.