If only I had discipline, but alas, it is only an obsessive-compulsive trait and the beauty of habit that causes me to return again and again to my work.

The story comes around, pushing at our brains, and soon we are trying to ravel back to the beginning, trying to put families into order and make sense of things. But we start with one person, and soon another and another follows, and still another, until we are lost in the connections.

You have to love. You have to feel. It is the reason you are here on earth. You are here to risk your heart.

Love. The black hook. The spear singing through the mind.

A woman's body is the gate to this life. A man's body is the gate to the next life.

There is no such thing as a complete lack of order, only a design so vast it appears unrepetitive up close.

You really need to approach each book as if you have been a failure. . . . If you start to believe your flap-copy, you're finished as a writer.