You begin always knowing nothing. You remain forever an amateur, a first timer.

There was nowhere I could go that wouldn't be you.

that since Cecilia’s suicide, the Lisbon’s could hardly wait for the night to forget themselves in sleep

The television replaced the sound of conversation that was missing from my grandparents' lives.

Being a writer is a solitary life. So the little part of me that's an actor still enjoys the theatrical part of reading and doing the voices and telling the story.

I think, especially when you're in college, each book that you're reading tends to tell you who you are.

The ideas for my books come about in two ways. There can be an intellectual idea that seems to be the reason for writing the book. [...] The other motive is unconscious. There is something deeply psychological and emotional that draws me to the material in the first place.