Protect the time and space in which you write. Keep everybody away from it, even the people who are most important to you.

People don't settle for people. They resolve to be with them. It takes faith. You draw a circle in the sand and agree to stand in it and believe in it.

Rarely does one see a squirrel tremble.

To a novelist, fluidity is the ultimate good omen; suddenly difficult problems are simply solved, intractable structural knots loosen themselves, and you come upon the key without even recognizing that this is what you hold.

...They cannot escape their history any more than you yourself can lose your shadow.

The idea that motherhood is inherently somehow a threat to creativity is just absurd.

I never attended a creative writing class in my life. I have a horror of them.