The writing of a novel is taking life as it already exists, not to report it but to make an object, toward the end that the finished work might contain this life inside it and offer it to the reader. The essence will not be, of course, the same thing as the raw material; it is not even of the same family of things. The novel is something that never was before and will not be again.

I was always my own teacher.

To write honestly and with all our powers is the least we can do, and the most.

Laurel could not see her face but only the back of her neck, the most vulnerable part of anybody, and she thought: Is there any sleeping person you can be entirely sure you have not misjudged?

I think that as you learn more about writing you learn to be direct.

Each story tells me how to write it, but not the one afterwards.

Every story teaches you how to write that story but not the next story.