For my money, there are no more fascinating, hard-working, vulnerable creatures on earth than writers. Every day, they lay their souls out there for public approval or rejection.

This is New York, babe. Be ready to expect anything.

Poverty made me feel weak, as if I were coming down with an awful, debilitating, communicable disease - the disease of being without money. Instead of going to the hospital, you went to the poor farm. The difference was, you never got well at the poor farm.

Not everything in church is truth ... And not all truth turns up in church.

Why do you still feel the need to punish yourself for something that was out of your control?

I know this much: if you gotta write, honey, you gotta write. Some call it a disease, some a madness. Ah, but I call it love.

There was a strange kind of comfort in misunderstandings and differences that were old enough to have lost their teeth.