The beginning and the end are never really the journey of discovery for me. It is the middle that remains a puzzle until well into the writing. That's how life is most of the time, isn't it? You know where you are and where you hope to wind up. It's the getting there that's challenging.

Writing seems to be the only profession people imagine you can do by thinking about doing it.

My home was in a pleasant place outside of Philadelphia. But I really lived, truly lived, somewhere else. I lived within the covers of books.

Maybe crazy is just the word we use for feelings that will not be contained.

As I said, I had this fabulous college education. At college I met the man to whom I've been married for 34 years and who is the father of those three kids. I seriously considered going to another college, and my life would have been completely different in every way.

I wondered why I hadn't loved that day more, why I hadn't savored every bit of it...why I hadn't known how good it was to live so normally, so everyday. But you only know that, I suppose, after it's not normal and every day any longer.

Women writers of all people should know better than to pigeonhole women, put them in little groups, the smart one, the sweet one.