Writers would be warm, loyal, and otherwise terrific people-if only they'd stop writing.

For while agents and editors often misunderstand their market and sometimes reject good or even great works, they do prevent a vast quantity of truly execrable writing from being published.

A great novelist excels on the small scale and the large, the individual leaf and root as well as the forest; good fiction convinces us that the imaginary is real by selecting exactly the right detail and rendering it perfectly.

The past will find a way to squeeze into the present–if you let it.

If we weigh the significance of a book by the effect it has on its readers, then the great children's books suddenly turn up very high on the list.

Nonfiction brought me back to earth and sobered me up whenever it seemed like I'd become too drunk on the lives and loves of imaginary people, but that doesn't mean it was any less thrilling or transporting, although it was often more illuminating.

The relationship between book and reader is intimate, at best a kind of love affair, and first loves are famously tenacious. [...] First love is a momentous step in our emotional education, and in many ways, it shapes us forever.