Sorrow has a name, and its name is loneliness. Sorrow has a shape, and its shape is absence. Sorrow is a sickness like any other.

...looking at him makes her feel like laughing all over - as if she could laugh not just with her mouth but with her eyes, her heart, her very limbs.

The future reshapes the memory of the past in the way it recalibrates significance; some episodes are advanced, others lose purchase.

Animals are born who they are, accept it, and that is that. They live with greater peace than people do.

When I write a book, I write very cleanly from page one to the last page. I hardly ever write out of sequence.

...perhaps charity is the kind of beauty that we comprehend the best because we miss it the most.

I never write a book unless I can't help it. Something has to bother me, like a mosquito, until I have to do something to relieve the itch.