I feel in some ways I've had a difficult life. And it makes me the kind of writer I am, in what I value, what I respect, what I hold dear.

Olive Kitteridge' is a masterpiece: The writing is so perfect you don't even notice it; the story is so vivid it's less like reading a story than experiencing it firsthand.

We are all children until our fathers die.

Time. There seems to be vast quantities of the stuff spooling around me in all directions, everywhere i look. Days and hours. Weeks and minutes. Years. The hard part, ive discovered, is filling it.

You can feel that he wants to own you - not like an object but like a good dream he wants to keep having. He lets you know that you already own him.

I don't have any real goals except to follow one good sentence with another... I'm not the kind of writer who has a map.

Nice,' I say, realizing only afterward that I've mimicked her, a bad habit of mine; I'm like one of those animals that imitates its predators to survive.