It came to me that hell would not be fire and smoke after all but arctic, everything white and frigid. Hell would be not anger but indifference.

You have to accept the critical reviews if they treat you with respect. Actually, it's one person's opinion. So, it's a concern but not an overriding one, and I don't stay up nights worrying about reviews. But there are certain people I respect who I hope will like a book.

That's what Archie did - built a house nobody could anticipate a need for, except himself, a house that was invisible to everyone else.

You bring up your children to be self-reliant and independent and they double-cross you and become self-reliant and independent.

A writer must take risks, defy the odds, be a bit obsessed and a little mad.

I don't like to think in terms of writing ten or twelve pages a day. Usually I'm writing a scene, and it's always with the idea, "I wonder what is going to happen." Or sometimes I write about something that affected me emotionally the day before and that I don't want to lose. I'm very unorganized at first; but finally it comes into a structure where consciously I'm working on a novel per se.

Everybody sins, Francis. The terrible thing is that we love our sins. We love the thing that makes us evil.