I have noticed before that there is a category of acquaintanceship that is not friendship or business or romance, but speculation, fascination.

I loved the house the way you would any new house, because it is populated by your future, the family of children who will fill it with noise or chaos and satisfying busy pleasures.

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

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

When a novel has 200,000 words, then it is possible for the reader to experience 200,000 delights, and to turn back to the first page of the book and experience them all over again, perhaps more intensely.

The novel as a form is usually seen to be moral if its readers consider freedom, individuality, democracy, privacy, social connection, tolerance and hope to be morally good, but it is not considered moral if the highest values of a society are adherence to rules and traditional mores, the maintenance of hierarchical relationships, and absolute ideas of right and wrong. Any society based on the latter will find novels inherently immoral and subversive.

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