Love is always a surprise and you never get it right.

Reading is also a creative activity if you're doing it right. You can learn more from a story that's left the tracks than from a successful story.

I grew up in a house without many books. The books the nuns made us read in school didn't interest me.

I write with a fountain pen. And then revise word by word and line by line so that the first draft of a scene is usually the tenth or so draft.

What you create when you're teaching fiction writing is a kind of literary salon, not a social club or a mutual admiration society, not a debating society, not a repair shop, not a fight club or a soap box. It's a place to have a conversation about a story.

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.

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