I do write long, long character notes - family background, history, details of appearance - much more than will ever appear in the novel. I think this is what lifts a book from that early calculated, artificial stage.

My family can always tell when I'm well into a novel because the meals get very crummy.

It’s like the grief has been covered over with some kind of blanket. It’s still there, but the sharpest edges are .. muffled, sort of. Then, ever now and then, I lift the corner of the blanket just to check, and .. whoa! Like a knife! I’m not sure that will ever change.

But if you never did anything you couldn't undo you'd end up doing nothing at all.

Just because we're related doesn't mean we are any good at understanding each other.

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

I don't type [when I write] because . . . I often have the feeling that everything flows directly from my right hand.