An average of seventy-four species become extinct every day, which was one good reason but not the only one to hold someone's hand.

When you're younger, it's all theoretical. It's all potential. As you get older, it becomes actual, and your life gets filled with unexpected complexity; some of it asked for, and some of it not. It becomes richer, I find.

I have a very strong sense of architecture in my novels. But at first it's sometimes like building a doorknob before you have a door, and a door before you have a room.

I like to think the world wasn't ready for me, but maybe the truth is that I wasn't ready for the world. I've always arrived too late for my life.

The accolades, just like the scrapes and bruises, fade in the end, and all you're left with is your ambition.

I take almost no notes when I write. I have one notebook - this old green leather notebook that my dad gave me a decade ago.

The truth is that she told me she couldn't love me. When she said goodbye, she was saying goodbye forever. And yet. I made myself forget. I don't know why. I keep asking myself. But I did.