There are moments that stop the heart, that catch the breath, that halt the beat of blood in your veins, and you are suspended in time, held between life and death, and you wait for something to bring you back again.

...pain reaches a certain point and does not get worse but remains in all its intensity and you can survive it.

We often think that tragedies happen because of great earthquakes in people's lives. I think they sometimes occur because of small things that become obsessive to a particular person.

A man I know who writes and aspires to be a novelist does very little reading, and he's not that successful. But I think it's because he's like the kid who wants to be a ballplayer and never goes to the ballpark or tries to hit a ball. So I'd say reading is the most important thing that I do, besides the actual writing. I'm always asking as I read, "How did the writer do this? Why do I suddenly have tears in my eyes? Why am I crying?"

It would be the death of all creativity for me if I had to sit there and be concerned with the sensibilities of a fourteen-year-old kid. Some fourteen-year-olds would revel in the book, and some would be very sensitive to it, so you can't afford to worry about that. What I worry about is good taste and getting my message across by whatever means I can.

Affection is one of the most neglected words in the English language, that people throw the word love around like confetti when they mean affection.

It would be nice to avoid the world, to leave it and all its threats and unhappiness. Not to die or anything like that, but to find a place of solitude and solace.