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.

Reading honest literature makes you love the world. Knowledge and understanding are love. Reading educates our feelings and enhances our sympathy. When you read for understanding, you are fundamentally changed. You are a different person at the end of the story or the novel than you were when it began.

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

Every person in therapy has a love disorder.

Novels are written, not wished into existence. You have to sit your ass in the chair or nothing gets done.

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.

Place is character. And all writing is regional.