Running! If there's any activity happier, more exhilarating, more nourishing to the imagination, I can't think what it might be. In running the mind flies with the body; the mysterious efflorescence of language seems to pulse in the brain, in rhythm with our feet and the swinging of our arms.

Keep a light, hopeful heart. But ­expect the worst.

The mere passage of time makes us all exiles.

I was brought up to be sympathetic toward others.

Productivity is a relative matter. And it's really insignificant: What is ultimately important is a writer's strongest books.

I am inclined to think that as I grow older I will come to be infatuated with the art of revision, and there may come a time when I will dread giving up a novel at all.

Where there must be a choice, a girl will choose Daddy. Even if you are Mommy, you concede that this must be so: you remember when you were a girl, too.