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

Everything was leveled, there were no extremes of joy or sorrow any more but only habit, routine, ancient family names and rites and customs, slow careful old people moving cautiously around furniture that had sat in the same positions for fifty years.

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

I write because I want more than one life; I insist on a wider selection. It's greed, plain and simple.

If I waited till I felt like writing, I'd never write at all.

In real life I avoid all parties altogether, but on paper I can mingle with the best of them

Time, in general, has always been a central obsession of mine - what it does to people, how it can constitute a plot all on its own. So naturally, I am interested in old age.