When there are no consequences, being wrong is simply a diversion.

Ninety-nine percent of the failures come from people who have the habit of making excuses.

Novels without female characters were a lifeless desert.

He had never before felt so self-consciously young, nor experienced such appetite, such impatience for the story to begin.

I'm holding back, delaying the information. I'm lingering in the prior moment because it was a time when other outcomes were still possible.

At that moment, the urge to be writing was stronger than any notion she had of what she might write.

The world should take note: not everything is getting worse.

The cost of oblivious daydreaming was always this moment of return, the realignment with what had been before and now seemed a little worse.

I think the novel, its business is the investigation of human nature.

Wasn't writing a kind of soaring, an achievable form of flight, of fancy, of the imagination?

Not being boring is quite a challenge.

Shall there be womanly times? Or shall we die?

Writing a novel resembles a journey with only the sketchiest of maps.

I wouldn't mind being the lead guitarist in an incredibly successful rock band. However, I don't play the guitar.

A story lives transformed by a gesture not made or a word not spoken

Could it ever be explained, how matter becomes conscious?

Oblivion seemed the only reasonable option.

When its gone, you'll know what a gift love was. you'll suffer like this. So go back and fight to keep it.

Reading groups, readings, breakdowns of book sales all tell the same story: when women stop reading, the novel will be dead.