What keeps you going isn't some fine destination but just the road you're on, and the fact that you know how to drive. You keep your eyes open, you see this damned-to-hell world you got born into, and you ask yourself, 'What life can I live that will let me breathe in & out and love somebody or something and not run off screaming into the woods?

You never knew which split second might be the zigzag bolt dividing all that went before from the everything that comes next.

Cooking is 80 percent confidence, a skill best acquired starting from when the apron strings wrap around you twice.

Stop a minute, right where you are. Relax your shoulders, shake your head and spine like a dog shaking off cold water. Tell that imperious voice in your head to be still.

My worst nightmare is being stuck somewhere with nothing to read.

Being a novelist and being a mother have exactly coincided in my life: the call from my agent saying that I had a contract for my first novel - that was on my answering phone message when I got back from the hospital with my first child.

I don't understand how any good art could fail to be political.