I sometimes lose interest in the characters and get much more interested in the trees and animals.

How exquisitely human was the wish for permanent happiness, and how thin human imagination became trying to achieve it.

I don't think a female running a house is a problem, a broken family. It's perceived as one because of the notion that a head is a man.

Being good to somebody is just like being mean to somebody. Risky. You don't get nothing for it.

Like friendship, hatred needed more than physical intimacy; it wanted creativity and hard work to sustain itself

I think some aspects of writing can be taught. Obviously, you can't teach vision or talent. But you can help with comfort.

And they beat. The women for having known them and no more, no more; the children for having been them but never again. They killed a boss so often and so completely they had to bring him back to life to pulp him one more time. Tasting hot mealcake among pine trees, they beat it away. Singing love songs to Mr. Death, they smashed his head. More than the rest, they killed the flirt whom folks called Life for leading them on.