Why do you always have to be right. Why do you always have to have the last word. For once in your life just let it go.

Quite often you want to tell somebody your dream, your nightmare. Well, nobody wants to hear about someone else's dream, good or bad; nobody wants to walk around with it. The writer is always tricking the reader into listening to the dream.

The ability to think for one's self depends upon one's mastery of the language.

Another thing I need to do, when I'm near the end of the book, is sleep in the same room with it...Somehow the book doesn't leave you when you're asleep right next to it.

Why do you always have to be right. Why do you always have to have the last word. For once in your life just let it go.

To assign unanswered letters their proper weight, to free us from the expectations of others, to give us back to ourselves--there lies the great, the singular power of self-respect. Without it, one eventually discovers the final turn of the screw: one runs away to find oneself, and finds no one at home.

The past could be jettisoned . . . but seeds got carried.