I do know that I need solitude, not only to write but to nourish myself (being, like most writers, an introvert) so that I do keep trying to write.

Trouble can always be borne when it is shared.

Death is very mysterious to us. One moment someone is there with us, and the next moment they're not.

It seems to me that there are two great enemies of peace - fear and selfishness.

I think if a book has the power to move a reader, it also has the power to offend a reader. And you want your books to have power, so you just have to take what comes with that.

All of us can think of a book... that we hope none of our children or any other children have taken off the shelf. But if I have the right to remove that book from the shelf - that work I abhor - then you also have exactly the same right and so does everyone else. And then we have no books left on the shelf for any of us.

We do have trouble dealing with death, but it's the one thing that is guaranteed we are all going to have to do, and we are going to have to face it many times before we die ourselves.