One doesn't generally look into mirrors when one is especially angry; one has better things to do, like pace the floor or throw things.

What we can do, we must do: we must use what we are given, and we must use it the best we can, however much or little help we have for the task. What you have been given is a hard thing--a very hard thing... But my darling, what if there were no one who could do the difficult things?

But it was equally clear to her that this was her fate, that she had called its name and it had come to her, and she could do nothing now but own it.

Oh,' she said, too bone-weary to pretend: 'I would far rather that I love you as I saw yesterday I do than that I had gone on worshiping you as I did not long since.' And she turned away hastily, and did not see that Little John would reach out to her; and half-running, went to Tuck's cottage, where she could pull on her half-dry clothes, and become a proper outlaw again. At least, she thought, fighting back tears, like this I am Cecil, with a place among friends, and a task to do. I am someone. I wonder if perhaps if I am no longer Cecil, I am no one at all.

The train is roaring toward you and the villain is twirling his moustache and you're fussing that he's tied you to the tracks with the wrong kind of rope.

My sheets had never been so clean as they had in the past few months. I hardly got them on again before something else happened and I was feverishly ripping them off and stuffing them in the wash with double amounts of soap and all the "extra" buttons pushed: extra wash, extra rinse, extra water, extra spin, extra protection against things that go bump in the night.

Write what you want to read. The person you know best in this world is you. Listen to yourself. If you are excited by what you are writing, you have a much better chance of putting that excitement over to a reader.