We shouldn't have been so scornful; we should have had compassion. But compassion takes work, and we were young.

He was deciding whether to cut her throat or love her forever.

You quickly find, when you are a hand-reader as I am, that nothing interests people so much as themselves.

I got into trouble a while ago for saying that I thought the internet led to increased literacy - people scolded me about the shocking grammar to be found online - but I was talking about fundamentals: quite simply, you can't use the net unless you can read.

All stories are about wolves. All worth repeating, that is. Anything else is sentimental drivel.

I'm the only person you've ever met who has read Longfellow.

The temptation is to stay inside; to subside into the kind of recluse whom neighborhood children regard with derision and little awe; to let the hedges and weeds grow up, to allow the doors to rust shut, to lie on my bed in some gown-shaped garment and let my hair lengthens and spread out over the pillow and my fingernails to sprout into claws, while candle wax drips onto the carpet. But long ago I made a choice between classicism and romanticism. I prefer to be upright and contained—an urn in daylight.