At a Boston signing, someone from the audience asked why I was so obsessed with furniture in my books. The question rattled around in my head. I had no idea that I was obsessed with furniture.

Learn to wait; invariably either things will change or your heart will.

Yo can always take back the lost parts of yourself if you can find and recognize them.

There's almost always a point in a book where something happens that triggers the rest of the plot.

If you are very lucky, you're allowed to be in certain places during just the right season of your life: by the sea for the summer when you're seven or eight and full of the absolute need to swim until dark and exhaustion close their hands together, cupping you in between.

I write about what interests me. It's very dangerous when you try to satisfy an audience.

Death doesn't make you sad- it makes you empty. That's what's so bad about it. All of your charms and beliefs and funny habits fall fast through a big black hole, and suddenly you know they're gone because just as suddenly, there's nothing left at all inside.