Literature sucks you into another psyche. So the creation of empathy necessarily influences how you’ll behave to other people.
To be hopeful, to embrace one possibility after another that is surely the basic instinct – crying out: High tide! Time to move out into the glorious debris. Time to take this life for what it is!
People’s dreams are made out of what they do all day. The same way a dog that runs after rabbits will dream of rabbits. It’s what you do that makes your soul, not the other way around.
Nonfiction requires enormous discipline. You construct the terms of your story, and then you stick to them.
Prayer had always struck me as more or less a glorified attempt at a business transaction.
The older I get, the more I appreciate my rural childhood. I spent a lot of time outdoors, unsupervised, which is a blessing.
Terms like that, ‘Humane Society,’ are devised with people like me in mind, who don’t care to dwell on what happens to the innocent.
I can count all the ways in which being a mother has enriched my understanding of the world, of character, my sense of the future and my attachment to it. I can’t imagine what kind of writer I’d be if I didn’t have my kids.
Our childhood had passed over into history overnight. The transition was unnoticed by anyone but ourselves.
The reason most people have kids is because they get pregnant.
What keeps you going isn’t some fine destination but just the road you’re on, and the fact that you know how to drive.
In the places that call me out, I know I’ll recover my wordless childhood trust in the largeness of life and its willingness to take me in.
That’s how it is: some people are content to wait till you ask, while others jump right in with the whole story.
He had senile dementia and liked to go outside naked, but he could still do two things perfectly: win at checkers and write out prescriptions.
Recall that whatever lofty things you might accomplish today, you will do them only because you first ate something that grew out of the dirt.
Finally, cooking is good citizenship. It’s the only way to get serious about putting locally raised foods into your diet, which keeps farmlands healthy and grocery money in the neighborhood.
Pay attention to your passions. They are the key to starting and finishing the book you are meant to write. I don’t believe in talent. I believe in passion.
When you pick up a novel from the bed side table, you put down your own life at the same time and you become another person for the duration.
Plot comes first. The plot is the archictecture of your novel. You wouldn’t build a house without a plan. If I wrote without a plot, it would just be a pile of bricks. Characters are your servants. They must serve your plot.
If you’re writing, you’re a writer. If you’re talking about it or thinking about it, I’m not so sure. Writing is ninety-eight percent work and two percent magic.