Home, bed, sleep, mother--who knew more beautiful words than these?

I craft everything in the beginning. I know where the characters are going before I start writing the book.

There was no time for kissing but she wanted him to know that in the future there would be. A kiss in so much loneliness was like a hand pulling you up out of the water, scooping you up from a place of drowning and into the reckless abundance of air. A kiss, another kiss.

It was all in my head and now all I had to do was figure out a way to get it down on paper.

Coming back is the thing that enables you to see how all the dots in your life are connected.

You can't say, "I'm too busy writing to be political." You are one person.

Fiction is always really a labor.