“If you want to sin, exaggerate.”

“Sin is the Monster we love to deny. It is crouching at the door and it wants you, but you must overcome it.”

“Shoot all the bluejays you want, if you can hit ‘em, but remember it’s a sin to kill a mockingbird.”

“I don't understand why it's a sin if you love something and want to keep it from having to suffer.”

“The papers exaggerate. They exaggerate everything, just to sell papers. The government exaggerates, to keep our minds off what morons they are.”

“Daytime sleep is like the sin of the flesh; the more you have the more you want, and yet you feel unhappy, sated and unsated at the same time.”

“One of the things my editor and I did fight about…is the idea of how much a reader can take. To me you get nowhere second guessing how much can a reader stand and how much can she not. What a reader can always tell is when you are holding back for fear of offending them. I wanted there to be something too much about the violence in the book, but I also wanted there to be an exaggeration of everything, an exaggeration of love, of empathy, of pity, of horror. I wanted everything turned up a little too high…”

“Why does God want us to let go of our dreams? Because anything you are unwilling to let go of is an idol, and you are in sin.”

“I think that is the big danger in keeping a diary: you exaggerate everything.”

“Females choose; their choosiness is inherited; they prefer exaggerated ornaments; exaggerated ornaments are a burden to males.”