Trollope wrote so many novels and other works that they tend to crowd each other out.

Not every novel that wants to be a tragedy gets to be one.

But what truly horsey girls discover in the end is that boyfriends, husbands, children, and careers are the substitute-for horses

A reader's tastes are peculiar. Choosing books to read is like making your way down a remote and winding path. Your stops on that path are always idiosyncratic. One book leads to another and another the way one thought leads to another and another. My type of reader is the sort who burrows through the stacks in the bookstore or the library (or the Web site — stacks are stacks), yielding to impulse and instinct.

The fact is that the same sequence of days can arrange themselves into a number of different stories.

The essence of charity ... was not deciding what others needed and giving it to them, but giving them what they wanted.

Horse racing is really much more intimidating than anything having to do with literature. When I had horses at the racetrack, I would wake up in terror in a way that I would never wake up while working on a novel.