Writing

Ideally, we lose ourselves in what we read only to return to ourselves transformed, and part of a more expansive world.

What I regret most in my life are failures of kindness. Those moments when another human being was there, in front of me, suffering, and I responded... sensibly. Reservedly. Mildly.

Don't write what you already know, write what you want to know.

Less is more is a lesson that can be applied to most things.

Life is about nouns and verbs. It's about action, about people doing. When you cut out adjectives and adverbs, you cut out the things that qualify action, or interpret or analyze action. You reach the pure essence of experience.

Pause before you make judgments about people's personal and professional decisions. Pause before you join in and disparage someone's sexuality or their intellectual ability. Pause before forwarding the untrue and inflammatory tidbits that have made it so difficult for public servants to serve.

Great stories happen to those who can tell them. The world will not do your work for you, but it will meet you more than halfway if you go after what you want with energy and passion.

I knew what intellectual passion felt like — because I'd felt it here, at Princeton — and I wanted to feel it again. I was 26 years old. Had I waited until I was 36, I would never have done it. I would have forgotten the feeling.

Make good art. Husband runs off with a politician? Make good art. Leg crushed and then eaten by mutated boa constrictor? Make good art.

In every career, your job is to make and tell stories. You will build a body of work, but you will also build a body of affection—the people you've helped and who've helped you back.

Comment is free, but facts are sacred.

The kind of ideas she lives with. Think of it. Not what happens to her, not love affairs or good career breaks, but what she thinks about.