How are we to spend our lives, anyway? That is the real question. We read to seek the answer, and the search itself--the task of a lifetime--becomes the answer.

Head held high and lips parted, she breathed in the music, sending it through her torso and arms and legs the way the Tai Chi teacher told us to breath the air, transforming it into energy, motion. Dancing is the body's song, and Bess sang.

Reading. Reading was the stable backdrop against which my life was played.

Once I got started, I wanted the life of a writer so fiercely that nothing could stop me. I wanted the intensity, the sense of aliveness that came from writing fiction. I'm still that way. My life is worth living when I've completed a good paragraph.

Getting away from being 'a good girl' is important because it's impossible to be a 'good girl' and a writer at the same time.

what I love is slowness. Slow people, slow reading, slow traveling, slow eggs, and slow love. Everything good comes slow.

How are we to spend our lives, anyway? That is the real question. We read to seek the answer, and the search itself--the task of a lifetime--becomes the answer.