Keeping people safe is a story we tell ourselves.

No matter how much we love a book, the experience of reading it isn't complete until we can give it to someone who will love it as much as we do

I think, if you want to grow a novelist, for that person to have a lot of boring time trying to entertain themselves is very important.

I was always on time, I did my work to exact specifications, I spoke when spoken to.

You can’t control what other people think about your art. Think about the part of yourself that you can control, which is your ability to be kind and loving and creative.

Sometimes love does not have the most honorable beginnings, and the endings, the endings will break you in half. It's everything in between we live for.

To say it was a beautiful day would not begin to explain it. It was that day when the end of summer intersects perfectly with the start of fall .... [p.218 ff.]