I expect that any day now, I will have said all I have to say; I'll have used up all my characters, and then I'll be free to get on with my real life.

And I am interested in the fact that class is very much a factor in America, even though it's not supposed to be.

I was standing in the schoolyard waiting for a child when another mother came up to me. Have you found work yet? she asked. Or are you still just writing?

Not until the final draft do I force myself to remember that I'm going to have to think about how it will affect other people.

No couple buying wedding rings wants to be reminded that someday one of them will have to accept the other one's ring from a nurse or an undertaker.

I wonder how many times we dream that kind of dream-something strange and illogical-and fail to realize God is trying to tell us something.

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