I come from a family of screamers. If they are trying to express any emotion or idea beyond pass the salt, it comes in shrieks.

I'd really like to write a book about Timothy McVeigh, but it would only work if he cooperated.

I am fortunate to have been well paid for an almost pathological honesty.

The moment in The Bell Jar when Esther Greenwood realizes after thirty days in the same black turtleneck that she never wants to wash her hair again, that the repeated necessity of the act is too much trouble, that she wants to do it once and be done with it, seems like the book's true epiphany. You know you've completely descended into madness when the matter of shampoo has ascended into philosophical heights.

In life, single women are the most vulnerable adults. In movies, they are given imaginary power.

I wanted so much to forget the past, but it wouldn't go away, it hung around like an open wound that refused to scar over, an open window that no amount of muscle could shut.

Very early in my life it was already too late.