“Clarice scrawled, 'A question from when I was a little girl that I can answer only now: are rocks made, or are they born? Answer: rocks are.”

“A little girl's fantasies are one thing, and literature is another; just as numbers require rules to give them human meaning, words, too, demand a form to turn them into literature.”

“Vocation is different from talent. One can have vocation and not have talent; one can be called and not know how to go.”

“I studied mathematics which is the madness of reason.”

“There is no right to punish. There is only the power to punish,' she wrote. 'A man is punished for his crime because the State is stronger than he; the great crime of War is not punished because beyond the individual there is mankind, and beyond mankind there is nothing at all.”

“You Up?' What a great question! Just to be asked was to know the answer.”

“When I read a novel I am not here. I am transported to far-off places, my eyes unseeing of the words on the page, busy with a scene being played out in my mind's eye, with my ears engaged, hearing the voices carry from the pen to the present. What a lovely place to be-not here - Just Jane (Chapter Four Page 35)”