Sometimes I get the start of a story from a memory, an anecdote, but that gets lost and is usually unrecognizable in the final s

You cannot let your parents anywhere near your real humiliations.

The complexity of things - the things within things - just seems to be endless. I mean nothing is easy, nothing is simple.

Always remember that when a man goes out of the room, he leaves everything in it behind. When a woman goes out she carries everything that happened in the room along with her.

I would really hope this would make people see the short story as an important art, not just something you played around with until you got a novel.

The conversation of kisses. Subtle, engrossing, fearless, transforming.

In your life there are a few places, or maybe only the one place, where something happened, and then there are all the other places.

We say of some things that they can't be forgiven, or that we will never forgive ourselves. But we do-we do it all the time.

My head was a magpie's nest lined with such bright scraps of information.

Love removes the world for you, and just as surely when it's going well as when it's going badly.

Life would be grand if it weren't for the people.

I didn't see her love, but I felt itthrough the sun, the wind, and the raindrops

Debt is a bottomless sea.

You never can tell with bees.

We must go beyond the constant clamor of ego, beyond the tools of logic and reason, to the still, calm place within us: the realm of the soul.

A woman is faithful to her first lover for a long time - unless she happens to take a second.

What I'm trying to do right now is truly answer my most deepest most unarticulated questions for myself through my writing in some form.

Rosie laughed in a not too reassuring way if you like sane laughter.

No... a novel is a long business. I'm a slow writer, even when I'm doing very well I write slowly.

Hairstyles change, and skirt lengths, and slang, but high school administrations? Never.

I will continue to work diligently in Congress to ensure that our veterans receive the benefits and care that they have earned and deserve.