She felt as if the mosaic she had been assembling out of life's little shards got dumped to the ground, and there was no way to put it back together.

I honestly think that in order to be a writer you have to learn to be reverent. If not, why are you writing? Why are you here?

But you don't always get what you want;,you get what you get

There are a lot of us, some published, some not, who think the literary life is the loveliest one possible, this life of reading and writing and corresponding. We think this life is nearly ideal.

When everything starts going wrong all at once, it is to protect something big and lovely that is trying to get itself born.

Some people may have thought that this book was too personal, too confessional. But what these people think about me is none of my business.

I never had a particularly strong craving to procreate, except for earlier fantasies of wanting to be Marmee in Little Women.