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.

Before I write a novel, images float around in my head that work like icons - they are meaningless in themselves, but serve as reminders.

Some novelists are luckier than others in the eras of their formative intellectual years, but all Weltanschauungs return, which means that most novelists have at least a chance of a revival.

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

Fascination with horses predated every other single thing I knew. Before I was a mother, before I was a writer, before I knew the facts of life, before I was a schoolgirl, before I learned to read, I wanted a horse.

Hungry ears are sharp ones.

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.