But sometimes, unexpectedly, grief pounded over me in waves that left me gasping; and when the waves washed back, I found myself looking out over a brackish wreck which was illumined in a light so lucid, so heartsick and empty, that I could hardly remember that the world had ever been anything but dead.

Actually, I enjoy the process of writing a big long novel.

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.

As much fun as it is to read a book, writing a book is one level deeper than that.

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

Not quite what one expected, but once it happened one realized it couldn't be any other way.

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