I'm a very old-fashioned novelist. I write 19th-century novels, where a lot of rules apply.

This is what self-centered religion does to us: it allows us to use it to further our own ends.

Most places we leave in childhood grow less, not more, fancy.

I grew up in a family where, through my teenage years, I was expected to go to church on Sunday. It wasn't terribly painful.

Sigmund Freud was a novelist with a scientific background. He just didn't know he was a novelist. All those damn psychiatrists after him, they didn't know he was a novelist either.

O God — please give him back! I shall keep asking You.

She was an expert at the art of sudden appearance.