You do not learn how to write novels in a writing program. You learn how by leading an interesting life. Open yourself up to all experience. Let life pour through you the way light pours through leaves.

We wait for the tortoises to come. We wait for that lady who walks them. That’s how art works. It’s never a jackrabbit, or a racehorse. It’s the tortoises that hold all the secrets. We’ve got to be patient enough to wait for them.

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

Saints make wonderful grandfathers and lousy husbands.

I was trying to unravel the complicated trigonometry of the radical thought that silence could make up the greatest lie ever told.

Mama always taught her children that words were pretty, but anyone can talk. She said, pay attention to that man or woman who acted, who did, who performed. She taught us to trust in thing we could see, not that we heard.

I don't believe in happy families.