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?

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

Some people are born to make great art and others are born to appreciate it. … It is a kind of talent in itself, to be an audience, whether you are the spectator in the gallery or you are listening to the voice of the world's greatest soprano. Not everyone can be the artist. There have to be those who witness the art, who love and appreciate what they have been privileged to see.

Love was action. It came to you. It was not a choice.

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.

Maybe the private life wasn't forever. Maybe everyone got it for a little while and then spent the rest of their lives remembering.

I think that people all grow up and have their same personalities, but you can say, "Oh, I can see the roots of this personality, which I didn't like, but then you grew up, and I can still see you as that person, but I do really like you now." Which is sort of how I feel about children - I mean, about children who I knew when I was a child and grew up with, and they're still my friends, and children that I know as children who I see growing up, and every year I like them more.