Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
Orchid hunting is a mortal occupation.
I don't like hiking with convicts carrying machetes.
I feel somewhat responsible for the Borders Books bankruptcy.
Most writing doesn’t take place on the page; it takes place in your head.
If you had really loved something, wouldn't a little bit of it always linger?
When you're researching you're learning. When you're writing, you're teaching.
Knowledge is a beautiful thing, but there are a few things I wish I didn't know.
It is hard to imagine Thomas Kinkade as anything less than supremely self-assured.
Oversized houses, like oversized cars, seem to be a particularly American fixation.
The first thing I think about when I wake up most mornings is the fact that I’m tired.
You have to simply love writing, and you have to remind yourself often that you love it.
The fact that dogs are not people means you don't have as much response to the particulars.
I can imagine a future in which real books will exist but in a more limited, particular way.
Sometimes I think I've figured out some order in the universe, but then I find myself in Florida
A snow day literally and figuratively falls from the sky, unbidden, and seems like a thing of wonder.
One of my favorite activities as a teen-ager was to watch television over the phone with my best friend.
When a machine can do something better and faster than a person can, I am happy to let the machine do it.
One of the very best reasons for having children is to be reminded of the incomparable joys of a snow day.
I think coexisting with another life form is a very rich experience. It's why people keep plants and animals.
There's a marvelous sense of mastery that comes with writing a sentence that sounds exactly as you want it to.
Libraries are what is best about us as a society: open, exciting, rich, informative, free, inclusive, engaging.
I think part of a hero construct is overcoming loss, or being abandoned, or having to make your own way in the world.
I suppose I do have one embarrassing passion- I want to know what it feels like to care about something passionately.
I teach a non-fiction writing class at New York University, and one of my great pleasures is deciding on the syllabus.
Dog parks are more cliquish than any other human gathering with the possible exception of seventh grade. Deal with it.
I am dismayed to realize that much of the advice I used to parcel out to aspiring writers has passed its sell-by date.
In my perfect world, we would establish perhaps four national zoos of unimpeachable quality and close the rest of them.
Every single one of my books had its title changed almost as we were going to press, for all sorts of different reasons.
I don't turn to greeting cards for wisdom and advice, but they are a fine reflection of the general drift of the culture.
I love Japanese design and fabrics. I also love people who make clothes for mass consumption but do it well and cleverly.
Keeping animals, I have learned, is all about water. Who even knew chickens drank water? I didn't, but they do, and a lot.
I like the idea that people get engaged thinking about design, about creativity. I don't see how it could possibly be bad.
Why, I wonder, should the popularity of a news story matter to me? Does it mean it's a good story or just a seductive one?
On the very same day that I ordered an iPad 2, I went shopping to buy myself a letter opener. I like to cover all my bases.
I love writing traditional magazine pieces, and especially their breadth of reporting and the deliberateness of the writing.
I would like to make sleeping my new hobby, except that I'm too tired, really, to have a hobby. But a girl can always dream.
I'm happy to be reminded that an ordinary day full of nothing but nothingness can make you feel like you've won the lottery.
Animals can seem more pure. Without complication, I mean, animals are selfless. What animals do for us, they do out of instinct.
I have worked on PCs and on Macs and, while I have my preferences, I don't find it crippling to work on one rather than the other.
I think of myself as something of a connoisseur of procrastination, creative and dogged in my approach to not getting things done.
The biggest problem with working at a treadmill desk: the compulsion to announce constantly that you are working at a treadmill desk.
Even after I'd published three books and had been writing full-time for twenty years, my father continued to urge me to go to law school.
I think the responsibility of running a huge business, which happens if you become a successful designer, probably makes you more careful.
I love convincing a reader that an unusual or seemingly ordinary subject is worth his or her time - it's part of the fun for me as a writer.
You can find out anything you want about a car now, and especially every bit of information about the price, without relying on the dealers.
The genius of a folk melody or story is not the feeling that it's original but quite the opposite - the feeling that it has existed all along.
I am unusually Halloween-attentive, because, as it happens, I was born on Halloween, so for me it has always been an occasion of great moment.
An ordinary life examined closely reveals itself to be exquisite and complicated and exceptional, somehow managing to be both heroic and plain.
Every corny thing that's said about living with nature - being in harmony with the earth, feeling the cycle of the seasons - happens to be true.
Dogs really are perfect soldiers. They are brave and smart; they can smell through walls, see in the dark, and eat Army rations without complaint.