“I will go to campus alone dressed in antique silk slips and beat-up cowboy boots and gypsy beads, and I will study poetry. I will sit on the edge of the fountain in the plaza and write.”

“He's never going to sit at my feet and write me poems, which is good because I hate poetry, except dirty ones that rhyme.”

“Have I ever waxed poetic about the glory that is the fuzzy-chested vampire wearing nothing but cowboy boots?”

“Scooping up the dress, I slip it over my head, and as it cascades to the floor. I suck my stomach for all I'm worth. Forget staying in with a good book. This Cinderella is going to the ball.”

“I write because I've always written, can't stop. I am a writing animal. The way a silk worm is a silk-producing animal.”

“When evening comes, I return home and go into my study. On the threshold I strip off my muddy, sweaty, workday clothes, and put on the robes of court and palace, and in this graver dress I enter the antique courts of the ancients and am welcomed by them, and there I taste the food that alone is mine, and for which I was born. And there I make bold to speak to them and ask the motives of their actions, and they, in their humanity, reply to me. And for the space of four hours I forget the world, remember no vexation, fear poverty no more, tremble no more at death: I pass indeed into their world.”