Just when you begin thinking of yourself as memorable, you run into someone who can't even remember having met you

Human beings are remarkable - at what we can learn to live with. If we couldn't get strong from what we lose, and what we miss, and what we want and can't have, then we couldn't ever get strong enough, could we? What else makes us strong?

We don't always have a choice how we get to know one another. Sometimes, people fall into our lives cleanly--as if out of the sky, or as if there were a direct flight from Heaven to Earth--the same sudden way we lose people, who once seemed they would always be part of our lives

Whereas she wished more of the population were better educated, she also believed that education was largely wasted on the majority of the people she met.

Be serious. Life hurts. Reflect what hurts. I don't mean that you can't also be funny, or have fun, but at the end of the day, stories are about what you lose.

Our memory is a monster; you forget it - it does not.

I believe a novel should be as complicated and involved as you're capable of making it.