We're tortured, a lot of us, believe me.

With reference to the younger generation..."If the experience of their exhausted, insomniac, dispirited elders makes them decide they'd prefer not to go straight from the classroom to the cubicle to the coffin, it doesn't mean they're lazy. It means they're sane."

I do think there's some aspect of being a novelist that is a little crazy making.

Not writing at all leads to nothing.

Wow, so much of the way I've transacted my life... so much of the results that I'm happy about are because of what Daddy did.

what we call things matters. ... The words we use, and how we perceive those words, reflect how we value, or devalue, people, places, and things.

I like to say that my mother had a very ordinary life. From the outside it didn't look like there was anything particularly special or wonderful about it, but when you watch somebody hold on to that life with both hands, it makes you think that life must be pretty damn good.