The stillness and stasis of bed are the perfect opposite of travel: inertia is what I've come to consider the default mode, existentially and electronically speaking. Bed, its utter inactivity, offers a glimpse of eternity, without the drawback of being dead.

I have done what people do, my life makes a reasonable showing. Can I go back to my books now?

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.

Like the bodies of dancers or athletes, the minds of readers are genuinely happy and self-possessed only when cavorting around, doing their stretches and leaps and jumps to the tune of words.

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.