At the time of writing, I don't write for my friends or myself either; I write for it, for the pleasure of it.

A whole tree of lightning stood in the sky. She kept looking out the window, suffused with the warmth from the fire and with the pity and beauty and power of her death. The thunder rolled.

There is absolutely everything in great fiction but a clear answer.

My own words, when I am at work on a story, I hear too as they go, in the same voice that I hear when I read in books. When I write and the sound of it comes back to my ears, then I act to make changes. I have always trusted this voice.

People give pain, are callous and insensitive, empty and cruel...but place heals the hurt, soothes the outrage, fills the terrible vacuum that these human beings make.

Time is anonymous; when we give it a face, it's the same face the world over.

Human life is fiction's only theme.