If I am good enough and quiet enough, perhaps after all they will let me go; but it’s not easy being quiet and good, it’s like hanging on to the edge of a bridge when you’ve already fallen over; you don’t seem to be moving, just dangling there, and yet it is taking all your strength.

An eye for an eye only leads to more blindness.

It's very hard for students not to be in debt unless they've got big scholarships or rich parents. And it's called investing in your future, but like any investment it's risky because your future is an unknown quantity. However, if you don't invest in your future, you may be flipping hamburgers for the rest of your life. So it's a real dilemma.

I am rather saddened at the end of a book. I think most writers find this. It's like a friend departing on a voyage.

Maybe sadness was a kind of hunger, she thought. Maybe the two went together.

A ratio of failures is built into the process of writing. The wastebasket has evolved for a reason.

You can pretty much trace when the big individual indebtedness kicked in, and it was when the credit card became generally available.