Growing up is difficult. Strangely, even when we have stopped growing physically, we seem to have to keep on growing emotionally, which involves both expansion and shrinkage, as some parts of us develop and others must be allowed to disappear...Rigidity never works; we end up being the wrong size for our world.

I used to think marriage was a plate-glass window just begging for a brick.

For fate may hang on any moment and at any moment be changed.

If you continually write and read yourself as a fiction, you can change what's crushing you.

I felt like a thief with a bagful of stolen glances.

We [fiction writers] are much more of a maze than we are a motorway. Things are always in flux, they're always in movement, they're always twisting back on each other. I think the straight line is such a lie.

I had been taught to look for monsters and devils and I found ordinary people.