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 once wanted to be a personage. Now I am comfortable being a person.

Don't ever forget the words on a postcard that my father sent me last year: "If you win the rat race, you're still a rat.

If an opportunity scares you, that's God's way of saying you should jump at it.

It is hard to find someone who will give your children a feeling of security while it lasts and not wound them too much when it isfinished, who will treat those children as if they were her own, but knows--and never forgets--that they are yours.

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.

What usually happens is that when I'm nearing the end of one novel a vague idea about what I want to do next begins to present itself to me in terms of theme. And I would say over about the next six to eight months, usually as I'm out power walking in the morning, or when I'm cooking at night, or when I'm driving in the car, the people who might embody those themes take on a sharper and sharper focus. And there comes this sort of critical mass moment when they actually start to do things in my head.