It's easier to love a woman when you can't understand a word she's saying.

But we cannot unbraid the story of another person’s life and take out all the parts that don’t suit our purposes and put forth only the ones that do.

I believe that, more than anything else, this grief of constantly having to face down our own inadequacies is what keeps people from being writers. Forgiveness, therefore, is key. I can't write the book I want to write, but I can and will write the book I am capable of writing. Again and again throughout the course of my life I will forgive myself.

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

Maybe that was the definition of life everlasting: the belief that the next generation would carry your work forward.

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

My writing process has changed because it's harder to find uninterrupted time.