Time is how you spend your love.

Then he gave her a kiss on the forehead that felt like a baptism and she wept like a baby.

I always remind myself that [ Jean-Paul] Sartre and [Simone] de Beauvoir didn't have children. And when you don't have children, it might be easier to believe that the child doesn't come with something.

I never bought the idea of individual genius from which the novel spews forth. It's always an act of curation.

If you're going to write a good book, you have to make mistakes and you have to not be so cautious all the time.

I do my best work under pressure, so I’ll nick an artery, and my husband isn’t allowed to stanch the bleeding till I’ve banged out a chapter.

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.