Reading is also a creative activity if you're doing it right. You can learn more from a story that's left the tracks than from a successful story.

The landscape of childhood shapes us as it shapes the characters in our stories. You never forget the sacred places of your childhood.

You lose a wallet or keys or something and you notice in a second, but your life can go missing and you don't even know it.

Love is anticipation and memory, uncertainty and longing. It’s unreasonable, of course. Nothing begins with so much excitement and hope and pleasure as love, except maybe writing a story. And nothing fails as often, except writing stories. And like a story, love must be troubled to be interesting.

Novels are written, not wished into existence. You have to sit your ass in the chair or nothing gets done.

There were the fairy tales my father told to me at bedtime. All the standards. I thought my father invented wolves.

Every act of loving affirms the goodness of the lover just because he is capable of loving and being loved.