When I was very little, four or five, I did comic strip drawings, so my first novel had no words. I couldn't write and thought adult handwriting was a mysterious scribble. When I was 14, my grandmother gave me a typewriter and I started writing in a different way.

All that matters in life is forging deep ties of love and family and friends. Writing and reading come later.

My students often say, "My roommate read this story and really liked it", and it's hard to convince them that there are things wrong with it. I say, "well, people who love you want you to be happy. But I'm your professor and I'm supposed to be teaching you something."

Writers and artists never pay attention to advice given by their elders, quite rightly. The only worthwhile advice is the most general: Keep trying, don't give up, don't be discouraged, don't pay attention to detractors. Everyone knows this.

For madness must be punished in a world in which mere sanity is prized. The revenge of the ordinary upon the gifted.

Maybe, love is always forgiveness, to a degree.

Impossible not to imagine the dead observing us. Our love for them a soft, shimmering gossamar that trails behind us.