For my own family, I would always choose the makeshift, surrogate family formed by various characters unrelated by blood.

Ever consider what pets must think of us? I mean, here we come back from a grocery store with the most amazing haul - chicken, pork, half a cow. They must think we're the greatest hunters on earth!

I read so I can live more than one life in more than one place.

But what I hope for from a book - either one that I write or one that I read - is transparency. I want the story to shine through. I don't want to think of the writer.

It seems to me that since I've had children, I've grown richer and deeper. They may have slowed down my writing for a while, but when I did write, I had more of a self to speak from.

It is not how much you love someone, but who you are when you are with him.

The Amateur Marriage grew out of the reflection that of all the opportunities to show differences in character, surely an unhappy marriage must be the richest.

It is very difficult to live among people you love and hold back from offering them advice.

Once upon a time, there was a woman who discovered she had turned into the wrong person.

People always call it luck when you've acted more sensibly than they have.

The hardest novel to write was Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant.

Roots never get the appreciation that a flower does, but that doesn’t make them envious.

If I'm experiencing a different thing every day and seeing a new environment every day, it can create a different mood or different feeling.

The things that keep me awake at night are things like textures and instrumentation and plotting out what things are going to do and what the sounds are that I'm trying to capture.

Without the United States, there simply would not have been an armed uprising in our country.

I wasn't sure I'd ever win again. Every time I got close, somebody seemed to play a little better.

Just trust yourself and you'll learn the art of living.

Wanna lose 1200 Calories a month? Drink a liter of ice water a day. You burn the energy just raising the water to body temp.

In the space of one delivery so much had changed. My confidence was sky-high. I was pumped up and rock'n'rolling.

It is these black clothes," said Strange. "I am like a leftover piece of funeral, condemned to walk about the Town, frightening people into thinking of their own mortality.

I wouldn't be happy about being considered a love poet or an environmental - I don't want any of those tags.