She was good at talking with young people. She seemed to view them as interesting foreigners.

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

There is no true life. Your true life is the one you end up with, whatever it may be. You just do the best you can with what you've got.

I consciously try to end my novels at a point where I won't have to wonder about my characters ever again.

...if you catalogue grudges, anything looks bad.

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

My cousin Roger once told me, on the eve of his third wedding, that he felt marriage was addictive. Then he corrected himself. I mean early marriage, he said. The very start of a marriage. It's like a whole new beginning. You're entirely brand-new people; you haven't made any mistakes yet. You have a new place to live and new dishes and this new kind of, like, identity, this 'we' that gets invited everywhere together now. Why, sometimes your wife will have a brand-new name, even.