As a writer we are our own instruments; we need to protect our instrument, because no one will protect it if we don't.

In the country, I stopped being a person who, in the words of Sylvia Boorstein, startles easily. I grew calmer, but beneath that calm was a deep well of loneliness I hadn't known was there. ... Anxiety was my fuel. When I stopped, it was all waiting for me: fear, anger, grief, despair, and that terrible, terrible loneliness. What was it about? I was hardly alone. I loved my husband and son. I had great friends, colleagues, students. In the quiet, in the extra hours, I was forced to ask the question, and to listen carefully to the answer: I was lonely for myself. [p. 123]

I'm very disciplined, but the one thing that I have addictive behavior about is the Internet.

I started realising that the themes running through all of my novels were really haunting and obsessing me about my own life.

Maggie Shipstead takes hold of the reader and doesn't let go. Astonish Me is a haunting, powerful novel.

When I lived in the city, I had learned to close my door against a lot of the noise, but when I open my door here, I'm not opening into the possibility that I'm going to run into somebody or be faced with a hundred choices about what I'm going to do, or which cafe I'm going to go to, or which way to distract myself.

Traces that live within us often lead us to our stories