It makes you wonder. All the brilliant things we might have done with our lives if only we suspected we knew how.

There are, of course, people who didn't create the trouble they're in, but lots of them do.

No matter how much we love a book, the experience of reading it isn't complete until we can give it to someone who will love it as much as we do

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 always feel it is a shortcoming of mine as a reader and as a writer that I frankly need to like somebody.

You are the same person in every aspect of your life, and you have to be a responsible person in every aspect of your life.

I used to do everything to keep a wall up around myself and keep my life quiet so that I could write.