We never believe we're beautiful, no matter how many times we hear it. We never believe it until someone says it in the right way.

I think poets are much more dramatic, more theatrical than fiction writers.

Traditionally, the love of reading has been born and nurtured in high school English class

You aim for what you want and if you don't get it, you don't get it, but if you don't aim, you don't get anything.

The mystery of death, the riddle of how you could speak to someone and see them every day and then never again, was so impossible to fathom that of course we kept trying to figure it out, even when we were unconscious.

Every page was once a blank page, just as every word that appears on it now was not always there, but instead reflects the final result of countless large and small deliberations. All the elements of good writing depend on the writer's skill in choosing one word instead of another. And what grabs and keeps our interest has everything to do with those choices.

You can assume that if a writer's work has survived for centuries, there are reasons why this is so, explanations that have nothing to do with a conspiracy of academics plotting to resuscitate a zombie army of dead white males.