Novelists are always resisting autobiographical readings of their work, because they know how false those can be.

We knew, finally, that the girls were really women in disguise, that they understood love and even death, and that our job was merely to create the noise that seemed to fascinate them.

Biology gives you a brain. Life turns it into a mind.

When I wrote The Virgin Suicides, I gave myself very strict rules about the narrative voice: the boys would only be able to report what they had seen or found or what had been told to them.

Basically what we have here is a dreamer. Somebody out of touch with reality. When she jumped, she probably thought she'd fly

It was one of those humid days when the atmosphere gets confused. Sitting on the porch, you could feel it: the air wishing it was water.

In the end, the tortures tearing the Lisbon girls pointed to a simple reasoned refusal to accept the world as it was handed down to them, so full of flaws.

Depression is like a bruise that never goes away. A bruise in your mind. You just got to be careful not to touch it where it hurts. It's always there, though.

You never get over it, but you get to where it doesn't bother you so much.

It was like autumn, looking at her. it was like driving up north to see the colors.

She held herself very straight, like Audrey Hepburn, whom all women idolize and men never think about.

The reason they don't ask me when they're having kids, of course, is because men can, pretty much, carry on a normal life once they've had a baby.

What you don't do can be a destructive force.

I listen to Radio 4 and put the iPod on shuffle. I like the randomness of, say, the Stones, then something from Nina Simone, Nick Drake or Bob Dylan.

This little ship you sent is more wonderful than the big one that takes me away from you.

I started reading when I was about three, a little over three.

You've got a thing for Donovan Caine. You have ever since you killed Ingles, his partner, and he went all dogged and determined on you.

I found eternal peace in a Shinto shrine. I've been to Shinto shrines and God is everywhere. Christ is one of the ways! God is everywhere.

May Mary, who in the freedom of her 'Fiat' and her presence at the foot of the cross, offered to the world, Jesus, the Liberator, help us to find him in the Sacrament of the altar

We just can't love without God. God wants for us want we want for ourselves. These basic things are not that hard to grasp. We just have to have faith, and faith is a gift. We just need to accept it.

When you are not sure on what to do, choose a life that is most meaningful to you and make it a habit.