The world we live in has been and is being increasingly politicized so that our daily experience is more and more a matter of public policy. A lot of fiction comes out of a child's feeling of, "Hey, that's not fair."

It's broadening. You meet people in your family you'd never happen to run into otherwise.

When one writes, there’s the double horror of discovering not only what it is that one so fears but also the triviality of that fear.

Nothing is more fortifying than learning that you have a real reader, a reader who truly responds both accurately and actively. It gives you courage, and you feel, I can crawl out on the branch a little further. It’s going to hold.

Everything makes me angry, unless it makes me sad.

time is as adhesive as love, and the more time you spend with someone the greater the likelihood of finding yourself with a permanent sort of thing to deal with that people casually refer to as 'friendship,' as if that were the end of the matter.

Every moment is all the things that have happened before and all the things that are going to happen, and...the way all those things look at one point on their way along a line.