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.

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?

I saw that my best work was my most personal work, which is odd, because my fiction is very far afield and has nothing to do with my life.

This is my job, my livelihood: the health and the well-being of the publishing industry. We're all responsible for this.

I don't believe in fate, as in, which I - as a Catholic, I think, sort of predestination. But I certainly believe in chance.

Sometimes if there's a book you really want to read, you have to write it yourself.

People gave me such a bad time about wanting a baby. I didn't want a baby, and I still don't. I wanted a dog.