For ridding oneself of faith is like boiling seawater to retrieve the salt--something is gained but something is lost.

You're a library of me.

This is what a woman is: unadorned, after children and work and age, and experience-these are the marks of living.

The novel leads you places that you never could have gotten to otherwise.

The young people have a phrase for this now, which is "slay in your lane." That's a very important principle of writing. You have to work out what it is you can't do, obscure it, and focus on what works.

All novels attempt to cut neural routes through the brain, to convince us that down this road the true future of the novel lies.

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.