Every writer can tell you that a book is only truly alive when it finds passionate readers who bring it alive in their imaginations.

Reading and thoughtfulness and openness are the best way, I should think, to begin to address the richness that is in each of us.

A book does not discriminate against any reader. All are welcome at the table of literature.

The point is not to pay back kindness but to pass it on.

For me, the writing life doesn't just happen when I sit at the writing desk. It is a life lived with a centering principle, and mine is this: that I will pay close attention to this world I find myself in. 'My heart keeps open house,' was the way the poet Theodore Roethke put it in a poem. And rendering in language what one sees through the opened windows and doors of that house is a way of bearing witness to the mystery of what it is to be alive in this world.

Each of us will have to make the choices that allow us to be the largest versions of ourselves.

When we read, even if the characters are tragic or sad or disturbing, these are our brothers and sisters in the human family.