I had long ago learned that when you are the giant, alien visitor to a remote and foreign culture it is sort of your job to become an object of ridicule. It’s the least you can do, really, as a polite guest.

You are accidentally leaving your DNA all over everything in a novel because it's all coming from you.

I think when you are an aspiring writer, you must write every day. It's not as though anybody will call you up on the phone and say, "I understand you are a very promising, aspiring writer and I'm going to give you this assignment." You have to create it yourself or it's never going to happen.

Creativity does not belong exclusively to professional artists and geniuses; it is the birthright of every single human being. Creativity is our common heritage. You don’t need to quit your job and move to Paris in order to lay claim to this heritage - all you have to do is clear some space in your life for whimsy, invention, sensory pleasure, and play. Most of all, you have to learn how to follow your curiosity more than your fear.

I don't think you can come into your wisdom until you have made mistakes on your own skin and felt them in reality of your own life.

But we are not what the other one needs, still he is certain that I will find great love in my life someday. He is sure of it. After all, he says, beauty attracts beauty.

I believe in miracles, I believe in the Law of Attraction, but even I don't think I'm big enough to manifest five Asian elephants cloaked in gold.