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.
It turned out that when my younger self thought of taking wing, she wanted only to let her spirit soar. Books are the plane, the train, and the road. They are the destination, and the journey. They are home.
Then when she really thought about it she realized she’d been becoming different people for as long as she could remember but had never really noticed, or had put it down to moods, or marriage, or motherhood. The problem was that she’d thought that at a certain point she would be a finished product.
My friendships have a certain symmetry at the moment: Alice is always asking me what she should do, and Nancy is always telling me what I should do.
There is so much obligatory generosity to being a good mother, a good wife, a good friend. Solitude is an acceptable form of selfishness.
Anyone familiar with the love affairs between men and women could have told them that theirs would soon be over.
Nearly everyone I meet expresses deep sympathy about the fact that I have never married. Sometimes I wonder why.
Her face looks like a room with no drapes or shades.
Life is haphazard. We plan, and then we deal when the plans go awry. Control is an illusion; best intentions are the best we can do.
I lived within the cover of books and those books were more real to me than any other thing in my life.
I’ve discovered that sometimes writing badly can eventually lead to something better. Not writing at all leads to nothing.
The thing that is really hard, and really amazing, is giving up on being perfect and beginning the work of becoming yourself.
Books are the plane, and the train, and the road. They are the destination, and the journey. They are home.
I would be the most content if my children grew up to be the kind of people who think decorating consists mostly of building enough bookshelves.
I hadn’t written a love story before and I hadn’t written a novel with a happy ending before.
Your children make it impossible to regret your past. They’re its finest fruits. Sometimes the only ones.
I was doing the family grocery shopping accompanied by two children, an event I hope to see included in the Olympics in the near future.
I got a fortune cookie that said, “To remember is to understand.” I have never forgotten it. A good judge remembers what it was like to be a lawyer. A good editor remembers being a writer. A good parent remembers what it was like to be a child.
My most pronounced writing habit is trying not to write.
I am a good friend to my husband. I have tried to make my marriage vows mean what they say. I show up. I listen. I try to laugh.