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 morning begins with trying not to get up before the sun rises. But when I do, it's because my head is too full of words, and I just need to get to my desk and start dumping them into a file. I always wake with sentences pouring into my head.

it takes your sleeping self years to catch up to where you really are. ... when you go on a trip, in your dreams you will still be home. Then after you've come home you'll dream of where you were. It's a kind of jet lag of the consciousness.

If you never stepped on anybody's toes, you never been for a walk.

I personally am inclined to approach [housework] the way governments treat dissent: ignore it until it revolts.

Fiction and essays can create empathy for the theoretical stranger.

God, why does a mortal man have children? It is senseless to love anything this much.