My mother was making $135 a week, but she had resilience and imagination. She might take frozen vegetables, cook them with garlic, onion and Spam, and it would taste like a four-star dinner.

I think the deeper you go into questions, the deeper or more interesting the questions get. And I think that's the job of art.

I truly believe the art's larger than the artist. Who cares about John Steinbeck? I care about the Joad family.

As a matter of writing philosophy, if there is one, I try not to ever plot a story. I try to write it from the character's point of view and see where it goes.

Romance dies hard, because its very nature is to want to live.

After the dead are buried, after the physical pain of grief has become a permanent wound in the soul, then comes the transcendent and common bond of human suffering, and with that comes forgiveness, and with forgiveness comes love.

The truth is life is full of joy and full of great sorrow, but you can't have one without the other.