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

Pleasure is, after all, a luxury. It's love that's essential.

I learned to love stories by listening to them.

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.

With each draft, the work gets better, and usually that means tighter. It means getting the precise word, not the approximate word.

If you think about it, fiction is nothing more than gossip about the people you've made up.

I had begun what I thought might be a career in social work. I was married and deeply involved in the anti-war movement. I thought I'd go about saving the world one person at a time. I worked with kids, teenagers mostly, in neighborhood centers, on the streets, and eventually in a drop-in center.