I love to write about sex. You just have to make it idiosyncratic. You have to have a strong comprehension of your characters, and write it from their point of view. It's really fun. It's not erotic.

you know that the urge for revenge is a fact of marital life.

Hungry ears are sharp ones.

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.

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.

In many ways, being honest about 'Huckleberry Finn' goes right to the heart of whether we can be honest about our heritage and our identity as Americans.

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.