Life will break you. Nobody can protect you from that, and living alone won't either, for solitude will also break you with its yearning. You have to love. You have to feel. It is the reason you are here on earth. You are here to risk your heart.

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

When women age into their power, no wind can upset them, no hand turn aside their knowledge, no fact can deflect their point of view.

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.

I have always kept notebooks and I go back to them over and over. They are my compost pile of ideas.

There are people who are always, I think, going to remain people of the book, to use another author's title, but people of the book, who really must be around.

We do know that no one gets wise enough to really understand the heart of another, though it is the task of our life to try.