Some people do wait their whole lives for something, and it's only when that thing arrives that they find out that they've been waiting rather than living.

Novelists of a conservative or more purely aesthetic bent hold up better on the surface, but their novels go in and out of fashion according to relevance or irrelevance.

Every first draft is perfect, because all a first draft has to do is exist.

After a long day, folk rest at night. After a long summer, folk play games and sit about in the winter. After a long life folk sit about the fire and stay warm, for the chill of death is upon them, and even the thickest bearskin can't keep off the shivering.

Like most of the educated, I do harbor a fondness for the sins of my ignorant past.

Gossip. The more you talk about why people do things, the more ideas you have about how the world works.

When 'The Awakening' was published it was considered so scandalous it was banned in the author's home-town library, and she herself was barred from the Fine Arts Club in the same city. What the novel has to offer, among other things, is honesty.