I don't know what I would do in the world without [female friends] for advice, for comfort, for simply knowing that there is someone out there who knows me as I am, and loves me despite and because of it.

You just can't tell or calibrate motive or intelligence or sense. So I don't read anything unless someone tells me that it's really smart or illuminating. I don't read any reviews anymore and it's been really liberating.

I stopped going to mass, and boy, it was painful for me, and it was certainly painful for my family, but I just couldn't ratify their behavior and their decisions anymore by showing up on Sundays.

All of life like a series of tableaux, and in the living we missed so much, hid so much, left so much undone and unsaid.

Books are the plane, and the train, and the road. They are the destination, and the journey. They are home.

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.

I don't really read what people write about me. Someone gives my novel one star; are they a troll? Are they someone who hates my politics and so has decided to do that?