Love is a fever," she said. "And when you come out of it you'll discover whether you've been lucky - or not.

This lunge at moral fastidiousness was something she'd noticed a lot in people around here. They were not good people. They were not kind. But they recycled their newspapers!

Love drains you, takes with it much of your blood sugar and water weight. You are like a house slowly losing its electricity, the fans slowing, the lights dimming and flickering; the clocks stop and go and stop.

Humor comes from the surprise release of some buried tension.

The only really good piece of advice I have for my students is, 'Write something you'd never show your mother or father. And you know what they say? I could never do that!'

Sometimes I ask myself if writing novels is even respectable.

As the most recently arrived to earthly life, children can seem in lingering possession of some heavenly lidless eye.