Each letter has a shape, she told them, one shape in the world and no other, and it is your responsibility to make it perfect.

Away from the bright motion of the party, she carried her sadness like a dark stone clenched in her palm.

Your understanding of a place changes the longer you stay; you discover more, and your own life gets woven into the fabric of the community.

...so young, so lonely and naive, that she imagined herself as some sort of vessel to be filled up with love. But it wasn't like that. The love was within her all the time and its only renewal came from giving it away.

Its impossible to control the reception of your work - the only thing you can control is the experience of writing itself, and the work you create.

I've been accused of trying too hard to rescue people

After Memory Keepers Daughter, it took me a few months to shut out the world. I really had to turn off the Internet and sort of cloister myself away from the world again and sink into that psychic space to write again.