the novel is inherently a political instrument, regardless of its subject. It invites you - more than invites you, induces you - to live inside another person's skin. It creates empathy. And that's the antidote to bigotry. The novel doesn't just tell you about another life, which is what a newspaper would do. It makes you live another life, inhabit another perspective. And that's very important.

When moral superiority combines with billowing ignorance, they fill up a hot-air balloon that's awfully hard not to poke.

You don't think you'll live past it and you don't really. The person you were is gone. But the half of you that's still alive wakes up one day and takes over again.

It's as if cats live in a seperate universe that takes up the same space as ours, but is full of facinating things like mice or sparrows or special TV programs that we can't see.

A woman without a man -- a condition of 'manlessness' -- is defined as alone. But a single mother is less alone than the average housewife.

It feels strange to me to be living in a box, hiding from the steadying influence of the moon; wearing the hide of a cow, which is supposed to be dyed to match God-knows-what, on my feet; making promises over the telephone about things I will do at a precise hour next year.

it's the thing you fear most that walks beside you all the time.