I'm beginning to think that maybe it's not just how much you love someone. Maybe what matters is who you are when you're with them.

Something was wrong with a world where people came and went so easily.

The hardest novel to write was Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant.

It seems to me that since I've had children, I've grown richer and deeper. They may have slowed down my writing for a while, but when I did write, I had more of a self to speak from.

I have spent so long erecting partitions around the part of me that writes - learning how to close the door on it when ordinary lfe intervenes, how to close the door on ordinary life when it's time to start writing again - that I'm not sure I could fit the two parts of me back together now.

For me, writing something down was the only road out...I hated childhood, and spent it sitting behind a book waiting for adulthood to arrive. When I ran out of books I made up my own. At night, when I couldn't sleep, I made up stories in the dark.

Bravest thing about people is how they go on loving mortal beings after finding out there's such a thing as dying.