“Men cheat. They lie. They love porn. The don't respect you and don't care if they hurt you. It's the fucking breaks. Women divorce 'em 'cause we can't tame 'em or train 'em or control 'em like we do household pets. End of story.”

“We get divorce, we get conned, someone we love dies, or we can't find anybody to love us or somebody breaks our heart and we realize this fairy tale ain't fair. So we suffer.”

“Students, eh? Love 'em or hate 'em, you can't hit them with a shovel!”

“Don't worry about how pretty (the story) sounds, how lilting it is, and the imagery, and the metaphor, all that. Most readers don't care. It's the people in your book that matter.”

“Barbarism? Hah! When we kills people we do it there and then, lookin' 'em in the eye, and we'd be happy to buy 'em a drink in the next world, no harm done. I never knew a barbarian who cut up people slowly in little rooms, or tortured women to make 'em look pretty, or put poison in people's grub. Civilization? If that's civilization, you can shove it where the sun don't shine!”

“Too many of us are hung up on what we don't have, can't have, or won't ever have. We spend too much energy being down, when we could use that same energy – if not less of it – doing, or at least trying to do, some of the things we really want to do.”

“I hope you meet somebody and get married and then they fucking disappoint you and you have to go through a divorce, and then maybe you'll get it.”