She may have looked normal on the outside, but once you'd seen her handwriting you knew she was deliciously complicated inside.

I remember liking to write stories pretty early on. In fourth or fifth grade, they would give us the beginning of a story, and we were supposed to finish it. I remember liking that. But I didn't think about deciding to become a writer until high school at about the age of 16.

Pregnancy humbles husbands. After an initial rush of male pride they quickly recognise the minor role that nature had assigned them in the drama of reproduction.

The Pulitzer Prize is an idea; it's a vote of confidence. Like literature, it exists purely in the mind.

But, like anyone in love, Madeleine believed that her own relationship was different from every other relationship, immune from typical problems.

Scars crossed her welded wrists.

A changeableness, too, as if beneath my visible face there was another, having second thoughts.