Quote

At some point, I fell in love. Shortly thereafter, I got my heart broken. Sniff, sniff. And I realized at a young age - no matter what any adult literary critic would have us believe about female strength and autonomy - there is no test to strength of character like love.

In poetry, you must love the words, the ideas and the images and rhythms with all your capacity to love anything at all.

It's a great thing when you feel that you recognize yourself, deeply and movingly, in a work of literature.

Much that is great in literature is an acquired taste, and you have to acquire it in the first place. Our job as parents is essentially to pass on the enthusiasm we had for the things we loved. That's how we'll get them to fall in love with reading in the first place and, hopefully, to stay in love with it.

Literature can allow us to experience the best side of humankind, where instead of giving up, we struggle desperately in the ruins for love, connection and hope.

I always used to look at books and wonder how anybody could come up with so many words. But my divorce and then falling in love with somebody else has released in me an ability to write in other ways apart from songs.

My love of literature goes back to my childhood.

Fiction and poetry are my first loves, but the really beautiful lyrical essay can do so much that other forms cannot.

There are people out there who genuinely love literature, who genuinely love to read and read widely, who will never like, or even necessarily get, my books. That was a hard one to swallow, to not feel slighted by.

I wrote a book, and I just love it when people come up to me and say, 'I read your book and loved it.'