Households that have lost the soul of cooking from their routines may not know what they are missing: the song of a stir-fry sizzle, the small talk of clinking measuring spoons, the yeasty scent of rising dough, the painting of flavors onto a pizza before it slides into the oven.

What a writer can do, what a fiction writer or a poet or an essay writer can do is re-engage people with their own humanity.

It's a great freedom to give up on love, and get on with everything else.

I'm of a fearsome mind to throw my arms around every living librarian who crosses my path, on behalf of the souls they never knew they saved.

Feeling that morality has nothing to do with the way you use the resources of the world is an idea that can't persist much longer. If it does, then we won't.

Anybody can get worked up, if they have the intention. It's peacefulness that is hard to come by on purpose.

Memory is a complicated thing, a relative to truth, but not its twin.