There you are, diligently swimming a straight line, minding the form of your strokes, when you look up and see, always a shock, the currents you can't even feel have pulled you off course.

Mind who you love. For that matter, mind how you are loved.

I, too, seem to be a connoisseur of rain, but it does not fill me with joy; it allows me to steep myself in a solitude I nurse like a vice I've refused to vanquish.

My publisher is generous with deadlines, which are never set in stone. Some writers need that pressure, but I am more productive when there's less panic.

I see life as increasingly complex, vivid, colorful, crazy, chaotic. That's the world I write about...the world I live in.

But things change, of course, and so do the ways in which people see themselves.

Now is almost always the better choice. You never know about later.