“Love. That was what she had that IT did not have.”

“She always had to have someone to love...She couldn't seem to believe that anyone could really love her. She always thought it was because she was a star, not just because of her herself, and she always had to be reassured.”

“I have never lived before...Until this summer, I did not know what it was to be alive.”

“She seems to have had the ability to stand firmly on the rock of her past while living completely and unregretfully in the present.”

“If she could give love to IT perhaps it would shrivel up and die, for she was sure that IT could not withstand love.”

“In the final exam in the Chaucer course we were asked why he used certain verbal devices, certain adjectives, why he had certain characters behave in certain ways. And I wrote, 'I don't think Chaucer had any idea why he did any of these things. That isn't the way people write.'I believe this as strongly now as I did then. Most of what is best in writing isn't done deliberately.”

“Love isn't how you feel. It's what you do. I've never had a feeling in my life. As a matter of fact, I matter only with earth people.”