Happiness compresses time, makes it dense and bright, pocketsized.

I saw that my best work was my most personal work, which is odd, because my fiction is very far afield and has nothing to do with my life.

I think people become consumed with selling a book when they need to be consumed with writing it.

I was starting to wonder if I was ready to be a writer, not someone who won prizes, got published and was given the time and space to work, but someone who wrote as a course of life. Maybe writing wouldn't have any rewards. Maybe the salvation I would gain through work would only be emotional and intellectual. Wouldn't that be enough, to be a waitress who found an hour or two hidden in every day to write?

She sang as if she was saving the life of every person in the room.

Staying within the world of a novel gives us the ability to be quiet and alone, two skills that are disappearing faster than the polar icecaps.

I think the best vacation is the one that relieves me of my own life for a while and then makes me long for it again.