Young children are naturally so philosophical. They ask: 'What is real? What is truth?' They have to learn it; they don't automatically know it. To them, it's a game. You can study this for years in college, and yet you probably asked it when you were four or five years old.

The sea, the sea, the sea. It rolled and rolled and called to me. Come in, it said, come in.

What exactly did people do when they had all the time in the world and could do whatever they liked?

I entered a poem in a poetry contest around 1987, and the poem won and I received $1,000 for it. That made me realize that maybe what I was writing was worth reading to people. After that, for some reason, I turned to novels and I've written mainly novels ever since.

Why do people not listen when you say no? Why do they think you are too stupid or too young to understand? Why do they think you are too shy to reply? Why do they keep badgering you until you will say yes?

Don’t be in too much of a rush to be published. There is enormous value in listening and reading and writing—and then putting your words away for weeks or months–and then returning to your work to polish it some more.

You can't keep the birds of sadness from flying over your head, but you can keep them from nesting in your hair.