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.

If you're trying to find out what's coming next, turn off everything you own that has an OFF switch and listen.

He used to say we all had a compass inside of us and what we needed to do was to find it and to follow it.

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.

Well, I always say that the two things I was most disastrous at in my life, being a teenager and being a wife, were the two things I really wound up cashing in on when I was writing fluffy magazine pieces.

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

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