One good maxim to keep in mind, and I can't remember who said it, "You meet the same people on the way down that you meet on the way up, but you're going the other way."

You shouldn't do that," said Laura. "You could set yourself on fire.

Genres aren't closed boxes. Stuff flows back and forth across the borders all the time.

By telling you anything at all I'm at least believing in you, I believe you're there, I believe you into being.

A home filled with nothing but yourself. It's heavy, that lightness. It's crushing, that emptiness.

Happy as a clam, is what my mother says for happy. I am happy as a clam: hard-shelled, firmly closed.

Some days I do appreciate things more, eggs, flowers, but then I decide I'm only having an attack of sentimentality, my brain going pastel Technicolor, like a beautiful-sunset greeting cards they used to make so many of in California. High-gloss hearts. The danger is grayout.