“I don’t use a crap camera, I don’t eat junk, and I’m not going to a dance where the boys are bores.”

And I knew that the roots of imagery were the senses – and that if my readers could feel.

I love rhinestones, faux jewelry.

The most precious research to me came from the paperwork filed on behalf of my grandparents and great-grandfather.

Food was celebration, conversation, and nourishment.

One person is all it takes to give a kid confidence.

I am in total silence when I write.

You can’t know if you’ll be here tomorrow or a year from now.

I look at my roommates who are so proud of me that it makes me proud.

And so, when I was a young writer I always worked hard on imagery.

When people are filled to the brim with love, they are their most beautiful.

They figure out what you need and they give it to you – without you asking.

Anything you ever make that matters takes a long time.

And if a man promises to build a ladder tall enough to reach it, she believes him, hikes up her skirt, and follows him to the stars.

No matter how large a horse’s ass you are, to stay by your side until death. A fool could tell you this is a bad deal.

Relief is a wonderful emotion, highly underrated.

The Wise County Bookmobile is one of the most beautiful sights in the world to me.

I’m never certain of a performance – my own or the other actors’ – or the script or anything. But to me it seems there’s only one place in the world the camera can be, and the decision usually comes immediately.

The camera is much more than a recording apparatus, it is a medium via which messages reach us from another world.

My philosophy is that I’m an artist. I perform an art not with a paint brush or a camera. I perform with bodily movement. Instead of exhibiting my art in a museum or a book or on canvas, I exhibit my art in front of the multitudes.

I am not as intelligent as Aamir Khan . I am barely managing to be in front of the camera. There are many people who know marketing well and surely Aamir knows much more than I do.

My co-stars call me selfish. They say you are only interested in yourself and what you are only interested is yourself and what you are doing in front of the camera. I reply, I can’t help it; it’s what got me where I am.

A film is never really good unless the camera is an eye in the head of a poet.

I started modelling while still studying. I liked doing television commercials and being in front of the camera. Lots of ad directors told me to try for films.

I feel that modelling has groomed my personality and made me a confident person, but even today, when I go on the ramp, I get nervous. I am more comfortable being in front of the camera than walking on the ramp.