Reading fiction not only develops our imagination and creativity, it gives us the skills to be alone. It gives us the ability to feel empathy for people we've never met, living lives we couldn't possibly experience for ourselves, because the book puts us inside the character's skin.

Love was action. It came to you. It was not a choice.

It was too much work to remember things you might not have again, and so one by one they opened up their hands and let them go.

Nonfiction is easy and fiction is hard.

Fiction is always really a labor.

For the most part wisdom comes in chips rather than blocks. You have to be willing to gather them constantly, and from sources you never imagined to be probable. No one chip gives you the answer for everything. No one chip stays in the same place throughout your entire life. The secret is to keep adding voices, adding ideas, and moving things around as you put together your life. If you’re lucky, putting together your life is a process that will last through every single day you’re alive.

If I was a waitress, I was too tired at the end of the day when I came home to try to write.