“The past is a candle at great distance: too close to let you quit, too far to comfort you.”

“The knock-kneed brown moose, a tired group of ten, yards ahead of her for the last three days, comfort her too. It's like following a pack of grandfathers, their large, weary eyes, red lids sagging, their gray muzzles, puckered as if the world is almost done with them but not quite yet.”

“You cannot fake effort; talent is great, but perseverance is necessary.”

“In stories, when someone behaves uncharacteristically, we take it as a meaningful, even pivotal moment. If we are surprised again and again, we have to keep changing our minds, or give up and disbelieve the writer. In real life, if people think they know you well enough not only to say, 'It's Tuesday, Amy must be helping out at the library today,' but well enough to say to the librarian, after you've left the building, 'You know, Amy just loves reading to the four-year-olds, I think it's been such a comfort for her since her little boy died'—if they know you like that, you can do almost anything where they can't see you, and when they hear about it, they will, as we do, simply disbelieve the narrator.”

“Learning to listen, letting people finish their sentences, and most of all, the habit of noticing the difference between what people say and how they say it. {on the habits of psychoanalytic training and practice applied to fiction writing} The gap between what people tell you and what's really going on is what interests me.”

“You are imperfect, permanently and inevitably flawed. And you are beautiful.”

“Some people are your family no matter when you find them, and some people are not, even if you are laid, still wet and crumpled, in their arms.”