I am always coming up with architectural metaphors when I think about writing. But I think one of the things that draw us to literature is that it gives us this very attractive illusion that there is meaning in the world - things connect.

Once upon a time there was a boy who loved a girl, and her laughter was a question he wanted to spend his whole life answering.

If I had a camera,' I said, 'I'd take a picture of you every day. That way I'd remember how you looked every single day of your life.

I think a lot of the questions - questioning reality and the self and the desire to change, to me are always at the heart of life. No matter how old you are, to me life is always about changing and growing and discovering and that's not always easy.

Loneliness: there is no organ that can take it all.

If the book is a mystery to its author as she's writing, inevitably it's going to be a mystery to the reader as he or she reads it.

I smiled back, the importance of manners, my mother always said, is inversely related to how inclined one is to use them, or, in other words, sometimes politeness is all that stands between oneself and madness.