Society was nothing but a long, dull dinner party conversation in which one was forced to speak to one's partner on both the left and the right.

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.

If what we want to do is promote reading and writing and publishing and making sure this is a business that keeps going - because it is a business! It's not just an art - then we have to take responsibility. I get sort of crazy and frothy when I think about this. It really matters.

I have been accused of being a Pollyanna, but I think there are plenty of people dealing with the darker side of human nature, and if I am going to write about people who are kind and generous and loving and thoughtful, so what? In my life I have met astonishingly good people.

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

The quality of gifts depends on the sincerity of the giver.

No one should have to go back to the place where she had once been a girl.