For a pure sense of being tumultuously alive, you can't beat the nasty side of existence.

Because that is when you love somebody - when you see them being game in the face of the worst. Not courageous. Not heroic. Just game.

I turn sentences around. That's my life. I write a sentence and then I turn it around. Then I look at it and I turn it around again. Then I have lunch. Then I come back in and write another sentence. Then I have tea and turn the new sentence around. Then I read the two sentences over and turn them both around. Then I lie down on my sofa and think. Then I get up and throw them out and start from the beginning.

I often have to write a hundred pages or more before there's a paragraph that's alive.

When I was a child... I was watching a snowstorm, and hopefully asked, 'Momma, do we believe in winter?'

I'm an Obama supporter. And if you're an Obama supporter that means you had a hard time during the Bush years.

Everybody who flashed the signs of loyalty he took to be loyal. Everybody who flashed the signs of intelligence he took to be intelligent. And so he had failed to see into his daughter, failed to see into his wife, failed to see into his one and only mistress—probably had never even begun to see into himself