You can't be a good person when you're writing and a bad person to your husband or a bad friend.

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

Time has a funny way of collapsing when you go back to a place you once loved. You find yourself thinking, I was kissed in that building, I climbed up that tree.

When well told, a story captured the subtle movement of change. If a novel was a map of a country, a story was the bright silver pin that marked the crossroads.

You can't always trust what you think, what you know ... but you can always trust your nature.

If what a person wants is his life, he tends to be quiet about wanting anything else. Once the life begins to seem secure, one feels the freedom to complain.

You throw a person in the river and then make a spectacle of jumping in to save them.