It's wonderful that nothing you write is ever going to be as beautiful as what's in your head, because that gap is where the art can enter and begin to stretch its limbs.

Amor animi arbitrio sumitu, non ponitur; we choose to love; we do not choose to cease loving.

I won't walk under scaffolding or under ladders. I wear things like a baseball player wears things that are supposed to have luck. I am superstitious about everything.

At least in my case, a very simple, regular, happy life makes for better writing.

When I was small and easily wounded books were my carapace. If I were recalled to my hurts in the middle of a book they somehow mattered less. My corporeal life was slight the dazzling one in my head was what really mattered. Returning to books was coming home.

I can say that if you're a writer who happens to be a woman, you'll get a book cover that depicts a woman with no head, or a woman turning away, or a pair of high heels. You have to fight to not get stuck with these covers. In the U.S. women are chick-lit writers unless they prove otherwise, and that's frustrating.

As a person, I do ascribe to a lot of magical thinking myself.