I don't think there was a particular book that made me want to write. They all did. I always wanted to write.

You surely know that in the course of a long marriage it is not unusual for a husband or a wife to develop a crush on someone else.

And yet, standing behind her son, waiting for the traffic light change, she remembered how in the midst of it all there had been a time when she'd felt a loneliness so deep that once, not so many years ago, having a cavity filled, the dentist's gentle turning of her chin with his soft fingers had felt to her like a tender kindness of almost excruciating depth, and she had swallowed with a groan of longing, tears springing to her eyes.

The appetites of the body were private battles.

I've always been tremendously interested in criminal law. It goes to a deep interest I have in prisons and the criminal element, and what we do as a society with it. I've always been touched by the idea of criminality.

She didn't like to be alone. Even more, she didn't like being with people. (148)

I don't think there was a particular book that made me want to write. They all did. I always wanted to write.