Charles Dickens was an avid seeker of names - he read directories and looked for odd names on gravestones.

I was depressed, but that was a side issue. This was more like closing up shop, or, say, having a big garage sale, where you look at everything you've bought in your life, and you remember how much it meant to you, and now you just tag it for a quarter and watch 'em carry it off, and you don't care. That's more like how it was.

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.

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

As Fallingwater demonstrates, Wright's genius was always specific, but also always lively, always daring.

I don't know - is everything the U.S. does a shocking embarrassment?

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