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

Reading fiction is important. It is a vital means of imagining a life other than our own, which in turn makes us more empathetic beings.

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.

Coming back is the thing that enables you to see how all the dots in your life are connected, how one decision leads you another, how one twist of fate, good or bad, brings you to a door that later takes you to another door, which aided by several detours--long hallways and unforeseen stairwells--eventually puts you in the place you are now.

I always used to be an inside person, and now I'm an outside person.

The tricky thing about being a writer, or about being any kind of artist, is that in addition to making art you also have to make a living.

If I had problems, I kept them to myself. I didn't make a scene.