Aquamarines grew with emeralds, Claire told me. But emeralds were fragile and always broke into smaller pieces, while aquamarines were stronger, grew in huge crystals without any trouble, so they weren't worth as much. It was the emerald that didn't break that was the really valuable thing.

What happened to a dream without a dreamer?

Always learn poems by heart. They have to become the marrow in your bones. Like fluoride in the water, they'll make your soul impervious to the world's soft decay.

A dependent clause (a sentence fragment set off by commas, dontcha know) helps you explore your story by moving you deeper into the sentence. It allows you to stop and think harder about what you've already written. Often the story you're looking for is inside the sentence. The dependent clause helps you uncover it.

Loneliness is the human condition. Cultivate it. The way it tunnels into you allows your soul room to grow.

In our exterior life, we can be only one person. But in our imagination, we can be anyone, anywhere.

Being in the library is so addictive for me that I really have to exercise self-control so I can get some writing done at home.