When I see things in the world that leap out at me, I want to make use of them in fiction. Maybe every writer does that. It just depends on what you claim or appropriate as yours.

Every person has a range. In fiction, you get to be it all. I’m as much the men in my book as I am the women. I write how I write and there is no mission to stake a claim.

To be alive is to listen quietly while other people talk. That's how you learn something.

I was doing that thing the infatuated do, stitching destiny onto the person we want stitched to us.

I’d been listening to men talk since I arrived in New York City. That’s what men like to do. Talk. Profess like experts. When one finally came along who didn’t say much, I listened.

Danzon is my favorite Cuban music, played by a traditional string orchestra with flute and piano. It's very formally structured but romantic music, which derives from the French-Haitian contradance.

People who want their love easy don't really want love.

For me, truth cracks open in the places where things do not cohere. That's how life is.

It's amazing how life conspires to set you up with what you need.

A funny thing about women and machines: the combination made men curious.

I don't regard the real and true and authentic as something to claim as a moral high ground.

Sin drains strength. Righteousness gives strength.

But heroes, at times, had to be fools.

If, however, economic ambitions are good servants, they are bad masters

If you can't dance then you are a loser.

Read your own obituary notice; they say you live longer. Gives you second wind. New lease of life.

The male - I have found - is a domestic animal which, if treated with firmness and kindness, can be trained to do most things.

But those who wish to prove to unbelievers that Scripture is the Word of God are acting foolishly, for only by faith can this be known.

Space and spacecraft and zero gravity and so forth are very difficult to render.

From a good teacher you may learn the secret of listening. You will never learn the secret of life. You will have to listen for yourself

I'm more comfortable in heels than I am in sneakers.