"I took piano for many years. I kicked and screamed through all of my lessons, but my mom really insisted."

"When I was in elementary school, I used to write letters to myself. I'd write letters and go 'Dear Kristen-at-16-years-old, happy birthday. I hope you're doing something.'"

"I deeply adored my mum. She was an extraordinary person, even for the prejudice I'm likely to have. She was beautiful, amusing, a tremendous elaborator of things into comic proportions and extravagant in her imagination."

"My quick beauty tip is always have a tinted gloss of some kind to give you some color even if you have no makeup on."

"I can barely conceive of a type of beauty in which there is no Melancholy."

"The pattern of a newspaperman's life is like the plot of 'Black Beauty.' Sometimes he finds a kind master who gives him a dry stall and an occasional bran mash in the form of a Christmas bonus, sometimes he falls into the hands of a mean owner who drives him in spite of spavins and expects him to live on potato peelings."