Your prospective employer, or the person you have a crush on, or the person you want to talk to. You're judging yourself, you know, thinking about your listener. You're not thinking about what you're saying. And that same thing happens when you write.

I've put up with too much, too long, and now I'm just too intelligent, too powerful, too beautiful, too sure of who I am finally to deserve anything less.

I can't do a linear novel. I'm just going to write what I need to write.

One of the things Thich Nhat Hanh taught me: he says, "When you're in a hurry, go slower." That works every time, unless you're trying to catch a plane.

Sometimes hearing the stories is going to change people's lives much more than if they read it.

Books are medicine and you have to take the right medicine that you need at that moment or that day or that time in your life.

Even if we don't know if God exists, we can be certain love exists, because its power transcends death.