The death of something living is the price of our own survival, and we pay it again and again. We have no choice. It is the one solemn promise every life on earth is born and bound to keep.

Wars and elections are both too big and too small to matter in the long run. The daily work - that goes on, it adds up.

It occurs to her that there is one thing about people you can never understand well enough: how entirely inside themselves they are.

If my setting is new to a reader, or the concerns of the novel are new, I hope they will learn something about the world. I would like to say that they can trust that what they do learn in the novel will be accurate, because I pay a lot of attention to facts. I do a lot of research to make sure that I'm not giving them, you know, blue moons of Jupiter. It's not science fiction.

You could love your crazy people, even admire them, instead of resenting that they're not self-sufficient.

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

But kids don't stay with you if you do it right. It's the one job where, the better you are, the more surely you won't be needed in the long run.