What do I want to take home from my summer vacation? Time. The wonderful luxury of being at rest. The days when you shut down the mental machinery that keeps life on track and let life simply wander. The days when you stop planning, analyzing, thinking and just are. Summer is my period of grace.

It is, I suppose, the business of grandparents to create memories and the relative of memories: traditions. We want to lodge moments, like snapshots, in the fleeting video of time.

I regard this novel as a work without redeeming social value, unless it can be recycled as a cardboard box.

You can believe in women's rights without believing that every woman is right.

Ultimately, time is all you have and the idea isn't to save it, but to savour it.

I rewrite a great deal. I'm always fiddling, always changing something. I'll write a few words - then I'll change them. I add. I subtract. I work and fiddle and keep working and fiddling, and I only stop at the deadline.

Maybe this year, we ought to walk through the rooms of our lives not looking for flaws, but looking for potential.