Sometimes you imagine that everything could have been different for you, that if only you had gone right one day when you chose to go left, you would be living a life you could never have anticipated. But at other times you think there was no other way forward--that you were always bound to end up exactly where you have.

Worry is a mean-faced dwarf who beats on your heart like a kettledrum.

I always try to stay as quiet as possible about a book until it's finished.

I write out of gratitude for all the books I have loved over the years.

In seventh grade I gradually became aware that that quickness of feeling was something I was supposed to have outgrown. I was rather guileless, I think, or at least I was when it came to the people I cared about.

With every sentence she writes, Davis freshens the senses. Her novels achieve a tone that’s unlike anyone else’s, creating an atmosphere you don’t so much interpret as breathe.

She had the same responsibility as everybody else did: to live as softly as she could in the world.