It's something that I know how to do because I taught for a very long time, so I can do it, and I feel a responsibility to do it - for instance, in this situation, where I'm touring specifically for this period of time. But most writers are not public people. There are a few writers out there who really enjoy it and are good at it, and can both work and do that at the same time, but I'm not one of those people.

He had a moment of clarity about how life should be lived: not as a child or as a woman. They were the two worst things to be.

She didn't even have to smile, and she rarely did outside her house--it was the eyes, her dancer's carriage, the way she seemed to deliberate over the smallest movement of her body.

Murder had a blood red door on the other side of which was everything unimaginable to everyone.

Between a man and a woman there was always one person who was stronger than the other one. That doesn’t mean the weaker one doesn’t love the stronger.

But she was waiting patiently. She no longer believed in talk. It never rescued anything. At seventy she had come to believe in time alone. ~pg 254

Please don't let Daddy die Susie," he whispered. "I need him.