People who are knowledgeable about poetry sometimes discuss it in that knowing, rather hateful way in which oenophiles talk about wine: robust, delicate, muscular. This has nothing to do with how most of us experience it, the heart coming around the corner and unexpectedly running into the mind. Of all the words that have stuck to the ribs of my soul, poetry has been the most filling.

the joy of someone who had been a reader all her life, whose world had been immeasurably enlarged by the words of others.

When men do the dishes, it's called helping. When women do the dishes, it is called life.

I think when people keep saying to you, "You're good at this," you just keep doing it.

For most of my life the only ceremonies I've been to at which women were the stars were weddings. So I like weddings.

There's a certain kind of conversation you have from time to time at parties in New York about a new book. The word "banal" sometimes rears its by-now banal head; you say "underedited," I say "derivative." The conversation goes around and around various literary criticisms, and by the time it moves on one thing is clear: No one read the book; we just read the reviews.

There is something so settled and stodgy about turning a great romance into next of kin on an emergency room form, and something so soothing and special, too.