They were involved in that awkward procedure of getting to unknow each other.

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.

A truly happy woman drives some men and almost every other woman absolutely crazy

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

The history of a city was like the history of a family—there is closeness and even affection, but death eventually separates everyone from each other. It is only the vividness of memory that keeps the dead alive forever; a writer’s job is to imagine everything so personally that the fiction is as vivid as our personal memories.

I have learned that the consequences of our past actions are always interesting; I have learned to view the present with a forward-looking eye.

You're nice,' Cushie told him, squeezing his hand. 'And you're my oldest friend.' But they both must have known that you can know someone all your life and never quite be friends.