“I have a cat, the pet that ranks just above a throw pillow in terms of required responsibility.”

“Falling apart is curling up into a fetal position and staying in bed for a week. What you were doing is having the emotional response an individual has to the loss of someone they love. We cry to give voice to our pain.”

“If your success is not on your own terms, if it looks good to the world but does not feel good in your heart, it is not success at all.”

“Jane Austen may not be the best writer, but she certainly writes about the best people. And by that I mean people just like me.”

“Who says great literatue has to be written by men? Who says great literature has to be about scary, creepy stuff like adulterers being punished and black slaves breaking loose and giant whales eating people? Why can't literature just be stories about women? Refined, respectable women have just as much to say as ignorant black slaves or bloodthirsty Indians or mad white whaling captains. Why do we have to pretend those people's lives matter more than our own?”

“There's a certain kind of conversation you have from time to time at parties in New York about a new book. The word "banal" sometimes rears its by-now banal head; you say "underedited," I say "derivative." The conversation goes around and around various literary criticisms, and by the time it moves on one thing is clear: No one read the book; we just read the reviews.”

“In books I have traveled, not only to other worlds, but into my own.”