“The ‘equilibrium’ that people see in me is really an illusion. I am as flawed as anyone. It’s only that I seem to have the knack of hiding.”

“I bare my nakedness to the world that the world may see who I am; not the mask that hides my flaws, not the mask that hides my beauty. I bask in the light and I take off the mask!”

“I have only got down on to paper, really, three types of people: the person I think I am, the people who irritate me, and the people I'd like to be.”

“I am not magnanimous enough to like people who speak to me without seeming to see me.”

“I like flaws and feel more comfortable around people who have them. I myself am made entirely of flaws, stitched together with good intentions.”

“But when I say it isn't meant for anyone's eyes, I don't mean it in the sense of one of those novel manuscripts people keep in a drawer, insisting they don't care if anyone else ever reads it or not.The people I have known who do that, I am convinced, have no faith in themselves as writers and know, deep down, that the novel is flawed, that they don't know how to tell the story, or they don't understand what the story is, or they haven't really got a story to tell. The manuscript in the drawer is the story.”