A novel can educate to some extent, but first a novel has to entertain. That's the contract with the reader: you give me ten hours and I'll give you a reason to turn every page. I have a commitment to accessibility. I believe in plot. I want an English professor to understand the symbolism while at the same time I want the people I grew up with - who may not often read anything but the Sears catalog - to read my books.

You see mother, you had no life of your own. They have no idea. One has only a life of one's own.

Your dreams, what you hope for and all that, it's not separate from your life. It grows right up out of it.

There is something in us that loves certain disasters and the fever of this moment and surrendering to that.

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

Maybe life doesn't get any better than this, or any worse, and what we get is just what we're willing to find: small wonders, where they grow.

The arc of history is longer than human vision. It bends. We abolished slavery, we granted universal suffrage. We have done hard things before. And every time it took a terrible fight between people who could not imagine changing the rules, and those who said, 'We already did. We have made the world new.' The hardest part will be to convince yourself of the possibilities, and hang on.