I don't do research for my novels. Obviously, in my other line of work as a reporter and a columnist, I've had the opportunity to get to know both social workers and TV talk-show hosts.

We take our vitamins, we go to exercise class, we put on our seat belts. And then something blindsides us and gives the lie to our carefully constructed facade of safety.

I'm writing this memoir from the perspective of somebody who's prosperous and has means. Having said that, one of the things that I think I discovered about those additional years is that I don't think they really are added to the end of life.

Maybe I had three children in the first place so I wouldn't ever have to play board games. In my religion, martyrs die.

There are those of us who believe that under certain conditions the cruelest thing you can do to people you love is to force them to live. There are those of us who define living not by whether the heart beats and the lungs lift but whether the spirit is there, whether the music box plays.

We read in bed because reading is halfway between life and dreaming, our own consciousness in someone else's mind.

I sometimes think that courage is the thing that you need more than any other thing. It's fear that cripples us. It's fear that accounts for racism, it's fear that accounts for sexism, for xenophobia.