Fiction begins with the senses, and the senses go to work in a place.

Every act of loving affirms the goodness of the lover just because he is capable of loving and being loved.

The landscape of childhood shapes us as it shapes the characters in our stories. You never forget the sacred places of your childhood.

We all sleep with the corpses of our dead lovers.

You lose a wallet or keys or something and you notice in a second, but your life can go missing and you don't even know it.

I used to believe that love and happiness were synonymous. I was a fool. Love intensifies all emotions. Nothing is so painful o so sweet, so thrilling or so desperate... Pleasure is, after all, a luxury. It's love thats essential. You are never so alive as when you love, never so alert, intuitive, attentive, never so smart or so compassionate.

Revision is not the end of the creative process, but a new beginning. It's a chance not just to clean up and edit, but to open up and discover. The energetic prose comes about from all the energy that went into crafting it, I suppose.