I write with a fountain pen. And then revise word by word and line by line so that the first draft of a scene is usually the tenth or so draft.

I grew up in a house without many books. The books the nuns made us read in school didn't interest me.

In revision, your imagination becomes deeply engaged with your material. It's when you come to know your characters and begin to perceive their motivations and values.

A pure love is a selfless love, but can desire ever be selfless?

The landscape of childhood shapes us as it shapes the characters in our stories. You never forget the sacred places of your childhood.

Drug programs began to turn their attention and money away from prevention and into maintenance. Methadone was cheaper than social workers, I suppose.

A lack of narrative structure, as you know, will cause anxiety.

You lose a wallet or keys or something and you notice in a second, but your life can go missing and you don't even know it.

Every act of loving affirms the goodness of the lover just because he is capable of loving and being loved.

Love is always a surprise and you never get it right.

The purpose of the first draft is not to get it right, but to get it written.

Success and failure are relative categories. Therefore, do not exult in victory and do not despair after defeat. Accept the changes in life placidly, knowing that autumn and winter come after summer.

I slept just floating in the middle of the flight deck, the upper deck of the space shuttle.

Student: Dr. Einstein, Aren't these the same questions as last year's [physics] final exam? Dr. Einstein: Yes; But this year the answers are different.

Perfect. Why was this so hard to find?”The other type of perfect is the type you never could have expected and then could never replicate.

Talking about your feeling with someone who is willing to listen can be enormously consoling, especially if that person has experienced a death similar to the one you are grieving.

The trouble with most Englishwomen is that they will dress as if they had been a mouse in a previous incarnation... they do not want to attract attention.

There is nothing as mysterious as a fact clearly described.

I use the gallery as if it were a doctor. I come for ideas and help - to look at situations within painting, rather than paintings.

In business school classrooms they construct wonderful models of a non- world.

It is exhausting knowing that most of the time the phone rings, most of the time there's an email, most of the time there's a letter, someone wants something of you.