Sooner or later, even the sharpest pain became flattened.

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.

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

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.

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 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

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.