I was meant to date the captain of the football team, I was going to be on a romantic excursion every Saturday night, I was destined to be collecting corsages from every boy in town before prom, accepting such floral offerings like competing sacrific...
There's a hardening of the culture. Reality TV has lowered the standards of entertainment. You're left wondering about the legitimacy of relationships. It's probably harder to entertain the same people with a more classic form of writing, and romanti...
More generally, I made an effort to leave out things that weren't relevant to the main narrative themes of the book, namely that there were two sides to Steve Jobs: the romantic, poetic, countercultural rebel on one side, and the serious businesspers...
I was encouraged that a group of women wanted to start WISH List, which works like EMILY's List, only it supports pro-choice Republican women. It was started by one of our members, and I was happy to tell her how we did it and encourage her.
Prayer is based on the remote possibility that someone is actually listening; but so is a lot of conversation. If the former seems far-fetcher, consider the latter: even if someone is listening to your story, and really hearing, that person will disa...
Without hesitation but with a sense of entitlement, he lifted my hand to his lips. He was gentlemen-like in every way... I don’t know why I wondered if it was an act or for real.
Teddy was feeling as miserable and impotently angry as any male creature does when two women are quarreling about him in his presence. He wished himself a thousand miles away.
You see," she concluded miserably, "when I can call like that to him across space--I belong to him. He doesn't love me--he never will--but I belong to him.
I went up on the hill and walked about until twilight had deepened into an autumn night with a benediction of starry quietude over it. I was alone but not lonely. I was a queen in halls of fancy.
Ever consider what pets must think of us? I mean, here we come back from a grocery store with the most amazing haul - chicken, pork, half a cow. They must think we're the greatest hunters on earth!
I think that once you open the door and allow people in on a certain aspect, it's very hard to then control how far that ripple effect is. So I think that the person who is known or famous has the ability to decide what they do or don't want to share...
I don't think about being famous, really. Being an author, I don't generally get stopped as I walk down the street. It's not like being a movie star.
You know who my gods are, who I believe in fervently? Herman Melville, Emily Dickinson - she's probably the top - Mozart, Shakespeare, Keats. These are wonderful gods who have gotten me through the narrow straits of life.
I love Sylvia Plath and Anne Sexton. I also love more cerebral poets like H.D. and Emily Dickinson. My parents subscribed to a monthly poetry periodical, and as a teenager I was introduced to Denise Levertov, who was an influence.
This song Emily by Joanna Newsom attaches my body to my soul which sails out and around me desperately trying to escape all the time. I still don't understand it's original meaning.
Emily: When I told you when I had to work late? I really went to go see the new Twilight movie by myself, and it was so bad.
Emily Posa: [From trailer] Why do I get the feeling you're doing me a really big favor? Ben Thomas: Because I get the feeling that you really deserve it.
Jess: Emily is terrific. Harry Burns: Yeah. But of course when I asked where she was when Kennedy was shot she said, "Ted Kennedy was shot?" Jess: No.
I think people turn to poetry more often than they think they do, or encounter it in more ways than they think that they do. I think we forget the places that we encounter it, say, in songs or in other little bits and pieces of things that we may hav...
The first book I wrote was The Bride Price which was a romantic book, but my husband burnt the book when he saw it. I was the typical African woman, I'd done this privately, I wanted him to look at it, approve it and he said he wouldn't read it.
Whether labeled as such or not, I think every book I've ever written has been, more or less, a romantic suspense. I have always put tremendous effort into making each book a page turner: The harder it is for the reader to put it down, the better I've...
