We no longer need to show people being brave: instead, we can examine how they became brave. We can assume that they didn't start out that way. If we allow that they started out just like us, then their journey into courage becomes both more fascinating and more impressive.

Life is extremely short and you cannot dance to current affairs.

Studying psychology is fun because you're always looking for the same things I think a writer should be looking for, which is the story behind the story.

This is the forked tongue of grief again. It whispers in one ear: return to what you once loved best, and in the other ear it whispers, move on.

The future looks like gasoline. . . . crude oil . . . is the future before it has been refined. It is like a dream of the future, really, and like any dream it ends with a rude awakening.

That is how we lived, happily and without hope. I was very young then, and I did not miss having a future because I did not know I was entitled to one.

I'm always determined that as a novelist I'm going to go out there and research my characters very thoroughly before I start writing.