Your own family resemblances are a frustrating code, most easily read by those who know you least.

For if there is any single thing that everyone hopes for most dearly, it must be this: that the youngest outlive the oldest.

I can think of no honorable answer. Why must some of us deliberate between brands of toothpaste, while others deliberate between damp dirt and bone dust to quiet the fire of an empty stomach lining? There is nothing about the United States I can really explain to this child of another world.

This is how Americans think. You believe that if something terrible happens to someone, they must have deserved it.

I believe with all my heart in delivering on my contract with my readers. They've got plenty of other things to do, so I had better give them a reason to turn every one of these 550 pages. This is my promise: I solemnly swear I'll make you laugh out loud at least once, cry a little in private, and burn whatever you left on the stove.

If you're writing, you're a writer. If you're talking about it or thinking about it, I'm not so sure. Writing is ninety-eight percent work and two percent magic.

The wrong words are impossible when there are no words.