Women have the feeling that since they didn't make the rules, the rules have nothing to do with them.

Any essayist setting out on a frail apparatus of notings and jottings is a brave person.

But novels are never about what they are about; that is, there is always deeper, or more general, significance. The author may not be aware of this till she is pretty far along with it. A novel's whole pattern is rarely apparent at the outset of writing, or even at the end; that is when the writer finds out what a novel is about, and the job becomes one of understanding and deepening or sharpening what is already written. That is finding the theme.

Statuettes of drunken sailors, velvet pictures of island maidens, plastic seashell lamps made in Taiwan. What contempt the people who think up souvenirs have for other people.

A chaplain's biggest gift is to be present and just listen.

Not having to own a car has made me realize what a waste of time the automobile is.

The whole process of writing a novel is having this great, beautiful idea and then spoiling it.