The English language on her tongue became a smoke-screen, without her eyes changing expression in the least.

The most powerful words in English are, 'Tell me a story.'

My mother thought of my father as half barbarian and half blunt instrument, and she isolated him from his children.

Good writing is the hardest form of thinking.

I don’t know why it is that I have always been happier thinking of somewhere I have been or wanted to go, than where I am at the time. I find it difficult to be happy in the present.

Anyone who knows me well must understand and be sympathetic to my genuine need to be my own greatest hero. It is not a flaw of character; it is a catastrophe.

I meet kids now who become novelists, poets, write for the theater and movies, who were simply inspired by what they saw during the Spoleto Festival.