My writing day has grown shorter as I've aged, although it seems to produce the same number of pages.

It is not how much you love someone, but who you are when you are with him.

I don't type [when I write] because . . . I often have the feeling that everything flows directly from my right hand.

For my own family, I would always choose the makeshift, surrogate family formed by various characters unrelated by blood.

It’s like the grief has been covered over with some kind of blanket. It’s still there, but the sharpest edges are .. muffled, sort of. Then, ever now and then, I lift the corner of the blanket just to check, and .. whoa! Like a knife! I’m not sure that will ever change.

Mostly it's lies, writing novels. You set out to tell an untrue story and you try to make it believable, even to yourself. Which calls for details; any good lie does.

...if you catalogue grudges, anything looks bad.