She hopes for nothing except fine weather and a resolution. She wants to end properly, like a good sentence.

In a whisper he began begging for—and, as the sun set, received—the concession people always beg for: a little more time.

I used to take that God's-eye view as a comfort when I was a child. I'd think, "Well, we couldn't find the world meaningful at all if it weren't for death." Of course, that is the smuggest and most intolerable of all perspectives because I'm not suffering from the death or the pain.

The secret to editing your work is simple: you need to become its reader instead of its writer.

Nowadays, I know the true reason I read is to feel less alone, to make a connection with a consciousness other than my own.

Fate is a quantity very much like TV: an unstoppable narrative, written, produced and directed by somebody else.

Other people’s words are so important. And then without warning they stop being important, along with all those words of yours that their words prompted you to write. Much of the excitement of a new novel lies in the repudiation of the one written before. Other people’s words are the bridge you use to cross from where you were to wherever you’re going.