Sometimes you can do all the right things and not succeed. And that's a hard lesson of reality.

When I looked at the painting I felt the same convergence on a single point: a flickering sun-struck instance that existed now and forever. Only occasionally did I notice the chain on the finch's ankle, or think what a cruel life for a little living creature - fluttering briefly, forced always to land in the same hopeless place.

If I had grown up in that house I couldn't have loved it more, couldn't have been more familiar with the creak of the swing, or the pattern of the clematis vines on the trellis, or the velvety swell of land as it faded to gray on the horizon . . . . The very colors of the place had seeped into my blood.

When you feel homesick,’ he said, ‘just look up. Because the moon is the same wherever you go.

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.

Storytelling and elegant style don't always go hand in hand.

It is is better to know one book intimately than a hundred superficially.