If the Lord hasn't got a boyfriend lined up for me to marry, that's his business.

If we can't, as artists, improve on real life, we should put down our pencils and go bake bread.

In fact, one of the things that I really love about literary fiction is that it's one of the few kinds of writing that doesn't tell us what to think or what to buy or what to wear. We're surrounded by advertising.

I'm never going to tell the reader what to believe; I'm going to examine these characters that believe different ways, and examine their motives.

People ask without wanting to know.

Morality is not a large, constructed *thing* you have or have not, but simply a capacity. Something you carry with you in your brain and in your hands.

Listen. To live is to be marked. To live is to change, to acquire the words of a story, and that is the only celebration we mortals really know. In perfect stillness, frankly, I've only found sorrow.