Laughter is the only strategy that has ever worked at all for me when my world is falling apart.

A story is a living thing, it moves and shifts.

Good writing is the hardest form of thinking. It involves the agony of turning profoundly difficult thoughts into lucid form, then forcing them into the tight-fitting uniform of language, making them visible and clear. If the writing is good, then the result seems effortless and inevitable. But when you want to say something life-changing or ineffable in a single sentence, you face both the limitations of the sentence itself and the extent of your own talent.

It's impossible to explain to a Yankee what `tacky' is. They simply have no word for it up north, but my God, do they ever need one.

Without music, life is a journey through a desert.

The water was pure and cold and came out of the Apennines tasting like snow melted in the hands of a pretty girl.

Her laughter was a shiny thing, like pewter flung high in the air.