No one knows how to write a novel until it's been written

I hate it when people tell me the end of the story because my mother always read the last page of a novel first to see whether she wanted to read it. It was a strange reading habit.

I wept to think that life went on even when so much had been lost, that rain still fell and myrtle grew between the rocks.

Every time I finish a book, I forget everything I learned writing it - the information just disappears out of my head

She didn't like being twelve. It felt like someplace between who she'd been and who she was about to be. It felt like no place at all.

It was as though I had one map inside my head and it led to the man who was waiting for me. Someone who was alone - maybe even more alone - than I was.

It was a great escape for me and it was a way to take a break from what was going on in my own world, to go into another world.