Rebecca Goldstein is a rare find among contemporary novelists: she has intellectual muscle as well as a tender emotional reach.

There are ways in which art can have a longer reach than politics.

I'm delighted when people respond with passion and readily intensity to my work. Literature is not as the economist would put it a positional good; in other words, there is infinite space for good literature.

It wasn't only wickedness and scheming that made people unhappy, it was confusion and misunderstanding; above all, it was the failure to grasp the simple truth that other people are as real as you.

Love doesn't grow at a steady rate, but advances in surges, bolts, wild leaps, and this was one of those.

Novels help us to resist the temptation to think of the past as deficient.

But to do its noticing and judging, poetry balances itself on the pinprick of the moment. Slowing down, stopping yourself completely, to read and understand a poem is like trying to acquire an old-fashioned skill.