With every book, you go back to school. You become a student. You become an investigative reporter. You spend a little time learning what it's like to live in someone else's shoes.

Kids are perfect people till grownups get their hands on them.

Plot is a map and I begin with it. It is what made me admire the novels of the 19th century; that the stories are foreshadowed. TheyÕre going someplace.

There are few things as seemingly untouched by the real world as a child asleep.

But I often think that so-called glamorous people are just very busy people.

Grant us safe lodging, and holy rest,” Mrs. Grogan was saying, “and peace at last.” Amen, thought Wilbur Larch, the Saint of St. Cloud’s, who was seventy-something, and an ether addict, and who felt that he’d come a long way and still had a long way to go.

Because abortions are illegal, women who need and want them have no choice in the matter, and you-because you know how to perform them-have no choice, either