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.

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

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.

(About parenting:) ... all that tedium, broken up by little spurts of high drama.

Some people are aware of everything that is going on everywhere at every moment in their lives.

There is no sound more peaceful than rain on the roof, if you're safe asleep in someone else's house.

I forget a book as soon as I finish writing it, which is not always a good thing