It's because of you when I'm in bed in the morning that I can wind my spring and tell myself I have to live another good day.

In his or her own way, everyone I saw before me looked happy. Whether they were really happy or just looked it, I couldn't tell. But they did look happy on this pleasant early afternoon in late September, and because of that I felt a kind of loneliness new to me, as if I were the only one here who was not truly part of the scene.

My priority is my books, at least at this point. What I have to do is write the narrative of this time.

When you are used to the kind of life -of never getting anything you want- you stop knowing what it is you want.

This place is too calm, too natural--too complete. I don't deserve it. At least not yet.

A state of chronic powerlessness eats away at a person

Dreaming is the day job of novelists, but sharing our dreams is a still more important task for us. We cannot be novelists without this sense of sharing something.