“My own daughter a streetwalker! If you have any consideration for your parents at all you'll do the only decent thing.What's that?You'll leave this house and not come back until you're a virgin.”

“Cats are dangerous companions for writers because cat watching is a near-perfect method of writing avoidance.”

“So you read this book and, God willing, enjoyed it. Do I have to tell you how proud a mother would be of a son like that? I Don't. Now maybe he'll give up all this foolishness and go into a worthwhile profession.”

“Feelings aren't good or bad. They're just weak or strong. Love, for example, is weak: someone loves you, you love them back, you're happy for a while, and then it fades away. But if one of those lovers betrays the other, then you have a real emotion - then you have something powerful, something that leaves a mark you'll never be rid of. Betrayal is the most delicious of all, but it takes a while to set it up, and fear can be just as intense if you know what you're doing.”

“Just handle what is in front of you now and the future will take care of itself. Otherwise, you'll spend most of your life wondering which foot you'll use to step off the curb when you're still only halfway to the corner.”

“Happiness is the most natural thing in the world when you have it, and the slowest, strangest, most impossible thing when you don't. It's like learning a foreign language: You can think about the words all you want, but you'll never be able to speak it until you suck up your courage and say them out loud.”

“Everything you'll ever need to know is within you; the secrets of the universe are imprinted on the cells of your body.”