Good novels are produced by people who voluntarily isolate themselves and go deep, and report from the depths on what they find.

Then she waited, with parted lips and a saucy challenge in her eyes, to see how her presence -- the drama of being her -- was registering. In the way of such chicks, she seemed convinced of the originality of her provocation.

It was a way of recognizing places of enchantment: people falling asleep like this.

Elective ignorance was a great survival skill, perhaps the greatest.

The reader is a friend, not an adversary, not a spectator.

I used to think it was hard to write, and I still find the process more or less unpleasant, but if I know what I'm doing it rattles along, then the rewrite whips it into shape rather quickly.

The place of stillness that you have to go to to write, but also to read seriously, is the point where you can actually make responsible decisions, where you can actually engage productively with an otherwise scary and unmanageable world.