The first sentence of a book is a handshake, perhaps an embrace. Style and personality are irrelevant. They can be formal or casual. They can be tall or short or fat or thin. They can obey the rules or break them. But they need to contain a charge. A live current, which shocks and illuminates.

...that in spite of living in a mansion an American is not above wearing a pair of secondhand pants, bought for fifty cents.

Isolation offered its own form of companionship

She had listened to him, partly sympathetic, partly horrified. For it was one thing for her to reject her background, to be critical of her family's heritage, another to hear it from him.

We are all #humans and we all make #mistakes. We #hurt people even if we don't want to.

Fiction is the only way I know a human being can inhabit the mind of another human being.

When I sit down to write, I don't think about writing about an idea or a given message. I just try to write a story which is hard enough.