When my daughter Paula died, I was in the deepest pain, and my mother said, "This kind of sorrow is like a long, narrow, dark channel. You have to walk this channel alone and be sure that there is light at the other ending. Just keep walking."

We don't have an explanation for everything that happens. We don't control almost anything. And if we are not open to that mystery, life becomes so small.

Some people connect with a story and may find between the lines something that might be useful to him or her, but that's not the intention of the author, I think. At least not mine.

People think that they will sit down and produce the great American novel in one sitting. It doesn't work that way. This is a very patient and meticulous work, and you have to do it with joy and love for the process, not for the outcome.

At times I felt that the universe fabricated from the power of the imagination had stronger and more lasting contours than the blurred realm of the flesh-and-blood creatures around me.

In times of conflict, war, poverty or religious fundamentalism, women and children are the first and most numerous victims. Women need all their courage today.

if we don't begin by imagining the perfect society, how shall we create one?