Ironically, now that my children are older and gone quite a bit, I find it harder to work when they're not around. Too much free time!

It's not finding what's lost, it's understanding what you've found.

I read Betty Smith's "A Tree Grows in Brooklyn," all of Shirley Jackson's books, which I loved.

Any institution becomes a community - whether it's a high school or a boarding school or a publishing company or a small town where everybody knows certain things about people.

I never even believed in happiness. I didn't think it existed. Now look at me. I'm ready to believe in just about anything.

Sally...can no longer think of love as a reality, or even as a possibility, however remote.

He stepped off the pavement like a man jumping off a bridge, as calm as a swimmer with an ocean out below. Lucy had known what he was going to do the instant their eyes met. She'd know what he intended because she would have done the very same thing if she'd had his courage. Nothing was going to break his fall.