As human beings, the closest we can get to truth is through story.

Art is an affirmation of life, a rebuttal of death. And here we blunder into paradox again, for during the creation of any form of art, art which affirms the value and the holiness of life, the artist must die. To serve a work of art, great or small, is to die, to die to self.

The novelist helps us to see things we might not notice otherwise.

My writing knows more than I know. What a writer must do is listen to her book. It might take you where you don’t expect to go. That’s what happens when you write stories. You listen and you say ‘a ha,’ and you write it down. A lot of it is not planned, not conscious; it happens while you’re doing it. You know more about it after you’re done.

The unending paradox is that we do learn through pain.

You don’t know the meaning of moderation, do you, my darling? A happy medium is something I wonder if you’ll ever learn.

What can we give a child when there is nothing left?