A snow day literally and figuratively falls from the sky, unbidden, and seems like a thing of wonder.

Orchid hunting is a mortal occupation.

I think of myself as something of a connoisseur of procrastination, creative and dogged in my approach to not getting things done.

Living in a rural setting exposes you to so many marvelous things - the natural world and the particular texture of small-town life, and the exhilarating experience of open space.

You have to simply love writing, and you have to remind yourself often that you love it.

Libraries are what is best about us as a society: open, exciting, rich, informative, free, inclusive, engaging.

One of the very best reasons for having children is to be reminded of the incomparable joys of a snow day.

An ordinary life examined closely reveals itself to be exquisite and complicated and exceptional, somehow managing to be both heroic and plain.

There's a marvelous sense of mastery that comes with writing a sentence that sounds exactly as you want it to.

Even after I'd published three books and had been writing full-time for twenty years, my father continued to urge me to go to law school.

I don't like hiking with convicts carrying machetes.

Vampire fans read the vampire not as death but as possibility

You cannot get tired if you're interested in what you do. That's the key thing.

In general, I'm careful when I'm dealing with subjects of deep cultural importance and write with abandon when I'm dealing with issues of personal dysfunction.

I don't know if fury can compete with necessity as the mother of invention, but I recommend it.

(Cartoon caption:) I never really rallied after the birth of my first child.

In writing a series of stories about the same characters, plan the whole series in advance in some detail, to avoid contradictions and inconsistencies.

Those who stand on their toes are not steady.

We go forward with our heads held high, but look back and remember where we come from.

Нou're always in constant dialogue with your interior self versus your exterior self: how you look, and how you're perceived, and then people's preconceived notions of you.

Everyone's showing their thong out the back of their jeans. But you shouldn't wear any. You get a better line if you wear no knickers.