The answer to religion is not no religion, but another way of thinking of it. Another way of being in it.

Sometimes, people trying to commit suicide manage it in a manner that leaves them breathless with astonishment.

Don't you know girls have to fool people every day of their lives if they want to get anywhere?

Sometimes by a woodland stream he watched the water rush over the pebbled bed, its tiny modulations of bounce and flow. A woman's body was like that. If you watched it carefully enough you could see how it moved to the rhythm of the world, the deep rhythm, the music below the music, the truth below the truth. He believed in this hidden truth the way other men believed in God or love, believed that truth was in fact always hidden, that the apparent, the overt, was invariably a kind of lie.

If the culture shifts, if people think differently about women, the art will shift, too. You can't ask art to make social change. It's not what it's for.

I've always prided myself on my discipline as a writer. I do it like a job. I get up in the morning and go to my desk.

With death comes honesty.