I never think about the actual process of writing. I suppose I have a superstition about examining it too closely.

Sooner or later, even the sharpest pain became flattened.

I just want to be told a story, and I want to believe I'm living that story, and I don't give a thought to influences or method or any other writerly concerns

It is very difficult to live among people you love and hold back from offering them advice.

People always talked about a mother's uncanny ability to read her children, but that was nothing compared to how children could read their mothers.

I suspect that marriage is like parenthood: every last one of us is an amateur at it.

Time, in general, has always been a central obsession of mine - what it does to people, how it can constitute a plot all on its own. So naturally, I am interested in old age.