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

I struggle with confidence, every time. I’m never completely sure I can write another book. Maybe my scope is too grand, my questions too hard, surely readers won’t want to follow me here. A novel is like a cathedral, it knocks you down to size when you enter into it.

The bad thing about small-town life is that everybody knows your business...I suppose that is my central obsession. What we owe to society, what we owe to ourselves.

The most assiduous task of parenting is to divine the difference between boundaries and bondage.

Literature is one of the few kinds of writing in the world that does not tell you what to buy, want, see, be, or believe. It's more like conversation, raising new questions and inspiring you to answer them for yourself.

my own relationships with the animals in my life are absurdly complex: Some I love, some I eat, and the scraps left over from the ones I eat, I feed to the ones I love.

Pure and unblemished souls must taste very bland, with an aftertaste of bitterness.