I like to think each writer is doing his or her part. Feeding the lake, as Jean Rhys said. And maybe there are different lakes.

Every person has a range. In fiction, you get to be it all. I’m as much the men in my book as I am the women. I write how I write and there is no mission to stake a claim.

To be alive is to listen quietly while other people talk. That's how you learn something.

I was doing that thing the infatuated do, stitching destiny onto the person we want stitched to us.

I’d been listening to men talk since I arrived in New York City. That’s what men like to do. Talk. Profess like experts. When one finally came along who didn’t say much, I listened.

Danzon is my favorite Cuban music, played by a traditional string orchestra with flute and piano. It's very formally structured but romantic music, which derives from the French-Haitian contradance.

People who want their love easy don't really want love.

For me, truth cracks open in the places where things do not cohere. That's how life is.

It's amazing how life conspires to set you up with what you need.

A funny thing about women and machines: the combination made men curious.

I don't regard the real and true and authentic as something to claim as a moral high ground.

I was not one man only but the steady advance hour after hour of an army in close formation, in which there appeared, according to the moment, impassioned men, indifferent men, jealous men.

After years of operating in a top-down manner that emphasizes control and conformance, organizations are rife with obstacles to bottom-up ideas that front-line staff are forced to overcome.

If you open your mind more than you open your mouth, you will open your world more than you open your doubt.

The realization, early in high school, that a particle behaved differently if observed or left alone.

Dignity of manner always conveys a sense of reserved force.

I usually am thinking about my next book the second I put the last dot on the previous one that I turn in.

The kids out there want something they can relate to, something that's real; most of that whiny stuff isn't real. The cheesy pop songs just bore me to death.

I should have no compassion on these witches; I should burn them all.

Change to me is like an old friend. It's not my enemy anymore. And I know it will keep coming back to visit again and again to teach me something new.

But in a story I can steal her soul.