Ambition robs you of your childhood. The moment you want to become an adult—in any way—something in your childhood dies.

Keep passing the open windows.

Kids are perfect people till grownups get their hands on them.

If you are careful,' Garp wrote, 'if you use good ingredients, and you don't take any shortcuts, then you can usually cook something very good. Sometimes it is the only worthwhile product you can salvage from a day; what you make to eat. With writing, I find, you can have all the right ingredients, give plenty of time and care, and still get nothing. Also true of love. Cooking, therefore, can keep a person who tries hard sane.

It's my experience that very few writers, young or old, are really seeking advice when they give out their work to be read. They want support; they want someone to say, "Good job."

People only ask questions when they're ready to hear the answers.

But who can distinguish between falling in love and imagining falling in love? Even genuinely falling in love is an act of the imagination.