In a way, I'm very interested in writing about Maine, because I think Maine represents its own kind of history. It's the oldest state, and it's the whitest state.

I suspect the most we can hope for, and it's no small hope, is that we never give up, that we never stop giving ourselves permission to try to love and receive love.

Traits don't change, states of mind do.

I actually see myself in all my characters. In order to imagine what it feels like to be another person I have to use my own experiences and responses to the world.

The facts didn't matter. Their stories mattered, and each of their stories belonged to each of them alone.

Had they known at these moments to be quietly joyful? Most likely not. People mostly did not know enough when they were living life that they were living it.

You surely know that in the course of a long marriage it is not unusual for a husband or a wife to develop a crush on someone else.

I'm so interested in the fact that we really don't know anybody. We think we know the people close to us, but we don't, we really don't.

People like to think the younger generation's job is to steer the world to hell. But it's never true, is it? They're hopeful and good - and that's how it should be.

Or maybe, he thought, returning to the boxes, it was part of being Catholic--you were made to feel guilty about everything

I do write by hand. I just think - I don't know, it's a physical thing for me. It's a bodily thing. It literally has to earn its way through my hand.

He looked at me like I was the stars when all I’d ever felt like was the dark nothingness between them.

There are plenty of chances in life, what's important is what you make of them.

The first step to solving any problem is to accept one’s own accountability for creating it.

Everything comes to the man who won't wait.

In the age of information, ignorance is a choice.

I've done lots of pieces on self-esteem and hair. There's a desire to conform, but if the encouragement to be yourself is there from loved ones, you'll find that later, that true self will come out.

I feel like the word shatter.

I just have to be very, very organised.

I've decided to take up smoking, my doctor said I wasn't getting enough tar.

Pre-state societies were far more violent than our own.