All lives are interesting; no one life is more interesting than another. Its fascination depends on how much is revealed, and in what manner.

Writing is like a love affair: the beginning is the best part.

I believed that if I was to call myself a writer, I should live on writing. If I could not live on it, even simply, I should destroy every scrap, every trace, every notebook and live some other way.

Against the sustained tick of a watch, fiction takes the measure of a life, a season, a look exchanged, the turning point, desire as brief as a dream, the grief and terror that after childhood we cease to express.

A writer's life stands in relation to his work as a house does to a garden, related but distinct.

She and Marie were Montreal girls, not trained to accompany heroes, or to hold out for dreams, but just to be patient.

Success can only be measured in terms of distance traveled.