Love is a general emotion. Marriage is exactingly specific.

My characters never die screaming in rage. They attempt to pull themselves back together and go on. And that's basically a conservative view of life.

As soon as you bring up money, I notice, conversation gets sociological, then political, then moral.

a bookstore is one of the few places where all the cantankerous, conflicting, alluring voices of the world co-exist in peace and order and the avid reader is as free as a person can possibly be, because she is free to choose among them.

Another thing I learned is that novels, even those from apparently distant times and places, remain current and enlightening, and also comforting.

Ignorance and bloodlust have a long tradition in the United States, especially in the red states.

The one thing ... maybe no family could tolerate was things coming out into the open.