Fear tastes like a rusty knife and do not let her ...

I can't write without a reader. It's precisely like a kiss - you can't do it alone.

For me, a page of good prose is where one hears the rain and the noise of battle. It has the power to give grief or universality that lends it a youthful beauty.

The need to write comes from the need to make sense of one's life and discover one's usefulness.

The heart never grows better by age I fear rather worse, always harder. A young liar will be an old one, and a young knave will only be a greater knave as he grows older.

Few women, I fear, have had such reason as I have to think the long sad years of youth were worth living for the sake of middle age.

I had used eclectic therapy and behavior therapy on myself at the age of 19 to get over my fear of public speaking and of approaching young women in public.

I think I'm a bit less inhibited, and not thinking too much before speaking. It's not about being shameful, I'm just a bit more unabashedly myself because of this thing, and it probably started at age 15. I can be around people and say what I think without fear.