People do not change, they are merely revealed.

Remember, if you sit at your desk for 15 or 20 years, every day, not counting weekends, it changes you. It just does. It may not improve your temper, but it fixes something else. It makes you more free.

I have no place left to live but in my own heart.

The only way to write a book, I’m fond of telling people, is to actually write a book. That’s how you write a book.

People think motherhood involves a lot of domestic labor, and it doesn't. It involves being nice to your children as often as possible. That's part of my trick. I don't have that anxiety about meeting their needs.

When I'm working, I'm not so much disciplined as obsessive. I have this feeling that I need to clear everything away and get this down.

Story is about pulling the reader in and a plot is a more externalized mechanism of revelation. A plot is more antic, more performative, and less intimate. When you're telling a story you're telling it into someone's ear.