There is no sound so terrible as a man's sorrow for his own death.

grief is an illness I can't recover from.

That's the way the system works. Sometimes you get the bear, sometimes the bear gets you.

The Jungian therapist taught me the difference between the ego and the shadow. I realized I'd been so busy being a good girl that I'd completely detached from my shadow. It's something we all have, and it's where all the creative juices are.

Too much virtue has a corrupting effect.

My second husband and I were going through a bitter divorce, and I didn't have the money for a fancy-pants attorney. I didn't know how to fight, so I'd lie awake at night and think of ways to kill him. But I knew I'd get caught, so I decided to put it in a book and get paid for it! I always think it's odd that a whole career came out of that homicidal impulse.

School was a source of great suffering to me, but once I learned to read, I disappeared into books, where I was a happy visitor to all the worlds that sprang full-blown from the printed page.