Love is a general emotion. Marriage is exactingly specific.

You know what getting married is? It's agreeing to taking this person who right now is at the top of his form, full of hopes and ideas, feeling good, looking good, wildly interested in you because you're the same way, and sticking by him while he slowly disintegrates. And he does the same for you. You're his responsibility now and he's yours. If no one else will take care of him, you will. If everyone else rejects you, he won't. What do you think love is? Going to bed all the time?

A novelist has two lives-- a reading and writing life, and a lived life. he or she cannot be understood at all apart from this.

Men are competent in groups that mimic the playground, incompetent in groups that mimic the family

In every society, the artists will be the ones who set themselves up as contrary to whatever the society expects.

With any novel that you begin, you can't foresee how difficult or easy it's going to be, and you can't really prepare yourself. You just have a take it one step at a time and know that it's all right to keep going - you can always fix it.

Take naps. Often new ideas come together when you are half asleep, but you have to train yourself to remember them.