It is easy to see things in retrospect. But I was ignorant then of everything but my own happiness, and I don’t know what else to say except that life itself seemed very magical in those days: a web of symbol, coincidence, premonition, omen. Everything, somehow, fit together; some sly and benevolent Providence was revealing itself by degrees and I felt myself trembling on the brink of a fabulous discovery, as though any morning it was all going to come together–my future, my past, the whole of my life–and I was going to sit up in bed like a thunderbolt and say oh! oh! oh!

It's hard for me to show work while I'm writing, because other people's comments will influence what happens.

Beauty is terror. Whatever we call beautiful, we quiver before it.

Children love secret club houses. They love secrecy even when there's no need for secrecy

Any action, in the fullness of time, sinks to nothingness.

My novels aren't really generated by a single conceptual spark; it's more a process of many different elements that come together unexpectedly over a long period of time.

Character, to me, is the life's blood of fiction