My goal in life is to become an adjective.

Reading a novel after reading semiotic theory was like jogging empty-handed after jogging with hand weights. What exquisite guilt she felt, wickedly enjoying narrative! Madeleine felt safe with a nineteenth century novel. There were going to be people in it. Something was going to happen to them in a place resembling the world. Then too there were lots of weddings in Wharton and Austen. There were all kinds of irresistible gloomy men.

There are some books that reached through the noise of life to grab you by the collar and speak only of the truest things.

I think it is important to remind people of the extent of our free will.

They're just memories now. Time to write them off.

It was amazing how it worked: the tiniest bit of truth made credible the greatest lies.

When I'm creating a character, it's a little bit like what my theater teachers used to tell me about Stanislavsky, like if you're using sense memory to do a scene - if you have to cry in a scene, you try to remember something in your life that made you cry and you use that in order to get the tears.