Anyone who has a choice and doesn't choose to write is a fool. The work is hard, the perks are few, the pay is terrible, and the product, when it's finally finished, is pure joy.

the first time you are reconciled to the terrible unfairness of disappointment, you are getting old.

Recorded history is wrong. It’s wrong because the voiceless have no voice in it.

When I'm working on a serious and solid book ... I read about a detective novel a day. It's the best legal dope in the world. It makes you feel good until the next morning you can work again.

Having watched herself in the speckled mirror ... she was already shocked beyond surprise at what the flat hand of age could do.

[The inspiration that comes to authors of fiction] is not an act of intelligence.

Because we are always growing, life compounds and magnifies what is already in us.

A woman knows what it means to experience the world as her individual self. That gives her insight into her own reality.

Age and illness made one a dualist

We believe in humility and integrity, the spirit of one people, bound together under God. We understand that the Constitution was written to control and regulate the government, not the people.

I never sat down and decided to make work about life and death. It just all comes out of my head like water pouring out of a jug.

I should probably confess that I get bored easily, which explains my reluctance to work with formula, tropes, whatever.

It's like looking at all the students and wondering who's had their heart broken that day, and how they are able to cope with having three quizzes and a book report on top of that.

Logic is a wonderful thing but doesn't always beat actual thought.

I don’t want to be an editor! I don’t want to direct; I’d be a horrible director. I don’t want to write - I have a “story by” credit on one film I did. And I don’t want to edit at all.

I would say that when I write prose I'm a more socially responsible person. I'm much more a citizen of the world. But the instability of the poetry, the emotional jaggedness, is also me.