One of the reasons that art is important to me is sometimes it actually feels more coherent than life. It orders the chaos.

The daily act of writing remains as demanding and maddening as it was before, and the pleasure you get from writing - rare but profound - remains at the true heart of the enterprise. On their best days, writers all over the world are winning Pulitzers, all alone in their studios, with no one watching.

There is a small window of opportunity for freckled girls to tan.

She lost much of her appetite. At night, an invisible hand kept shaking her awake every few hours. Grief was physiological, a disturbance of the blood. Sometimes a whole minute would pass in nameless dread - the bedside clock ticking, the blue moonlight coating the window like glue - before she`d remember the brutal fact that had caused it.

She wanted a book to take her places she couldn't get to herself.

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

We're all made up of many parts, other halves. Not just me.