If sinners where so unhappy, why would they prefer their suffering? But now I knew why. Without my wounds, who was I?

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.

Her hatred glittered irresistibly. I could see it, the jewel, it was sapphire, it was the cold lakes of Norway.

Her fingers moved among barnacles and mussels, blue-black, sharp-edged. Neon red starfish were limp Dalis on the rocks, surrounded by bouquets of stinging anemones and purple bursts of spiny sea urchins.

There used to be a category called women's fiction - meaning not too rude, not too much sex, a bit domestic and internal. Women have changed so much. We're so varied. And we've become more interested in the same varied experience in fiction.

Love is a check, that can be forged, that can be cashed. Love is a payment that comes due.

Writing mirrors the interior self. You know, any book is like the perfect blueprint of the psyche of the author.