The unspoken factor is love. The reason I can work so hard at my writing is that it's not work for me.

The desire to never leave your side, the desire to never see you again. The desire to see your face asleep on the pillow beside my face and to see your eyes open in the morning when I lie next to you—just watching you, waiting for you to wake up.

You can learn a lot from your lovers, but-for the most part-you get to keep your friends longer, and you learn more from them.

And Father said, “There are no happy endings.” “Right!” cried Iowa Bob – an odd mixture of exuberance and stoicism in his cracked voice. “Death is horrible, final, and frequently premature,” Coach Bob declared. “So what?” my father said. “Right!” cried Iowa Bob. “That’s the point: So what?” Thus the family maxim was that an unhappy ending did not undermine a rich and energetic life. This was based on the belief that there were no happy endings.

When writing a novel, I'm not smart enough to know how to foreshadow something if I don't know what it is.

To each other, we were as normal and nice as the smell of bread. We were just a family. In a family even exaggerations make perfect sense.

There's no reason you shouldn't, as a writer, not be aware of the necessity to revise yourself constantly.