Drinking would shut down my seeing and my hearing and my feeling," she used to say. "Why would I want to be in the world if I couldn't touch the world with all of my senses intact?

If you teach kids how to tell stories, they have a better chance at everything.

I'm not a pacifist by any measure, but I'm also fully aware that the reasons I might go to war could be very dubious.

The form I most enjoy writing is the sonnet or sonnet-like forms, where you have a - you know, three stanzas or two stanzas that lead into a concluding couplet.

I think the world is a series of broken dams and floods, and my cartoons are tiny little lifeboats.

When I had no money, and a great book came out, I couldn't get it. I had to wait. I love the idea that I have hardcover books here and at home that I haven't read yet. That's how I view that I'm rich. I have hardcover books I may never read.

The world, even the smallest parts of it, is filled with things you don't know.