None of my own experiences ever finds its way into my work. However, the stages of my life - motherhood, middle age, etc. - often influence my subject matter.

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.

...faith is acting as if God has already answered. And acting as if God has answered means acting on our prayers...

A man's rootage is more important than his leafage.

I prefer to be a dreamer among the humblest, with visions to be realized, than lord among those without dreams and desires.

What I'm going for with the string arrangements for my Antarctic symphony is a pun here.

Inflation has ... become the cruelest tax, destroying the value of the dollar and adding new costs to every purchase.

And then there was him, the long and painful love of her life.

Stand and face me, my love,and scatter the grace in your eyes.

Literature transforms and intensifies ordinary language, deviates systematically from everyday speech.

To read a novel is a difficult and complex art.