The novel is, above all, an intense experience of prolonged intimacy with another consciousness.
In this flirtation he was conducting, he had had to rely entirely on his personality, never a good idea.
Twenty-five, he was. Twenty-five tomorrow. Some years the snow had melted for his birthday, but not this year, and so it had been a long winter full of cows.
Take naps. Often new ideas come together when you are half asleep, but you have to train yourself to remember them.
Every first draft is perfect, because all a first draft has to do is exist.
The main thing about the novel that is totally fascinating: It’s not possessed by the writer; it’s possessed by the reader.
I suspected that there were things he knew that I had been waiting all my life to learn.
Horse racing is really much more intimidating than anything having to do with literature. When I had horses at the racetrack, I would wake up in terror in a way that I would never wake up while working on a novel.
Even if my marriage is falling apart and my children are unhappy, there is still a part of me that says, ‘God, this is fascinating!’
But what truly horsey girls discover in the end is that boyfriends, husbands, children, and careers are the substitute-for horses.
Progressivism is usually seen as a stepping back from individualism into a progressive community.
Sometimes, a novel is like a train: the first chapter is a comfortable seat in an attractive carriage, and the narrative speeds up. But there are other sorts of trains, and other sorts of novels. They rush by in the dark; passengers framed in the lighted windows are smiling and enjoying themselves.
Fascination with horses predated every other single thing I knew. Before I was a mother, before I was a writer, before I knew the facts of life, before I was a schoolgirl, before I learned to read, I wanted a horse.
Candy is my fuel. Ice cream, too.
Men are competent in groups that mimic the playground, incompetent in groups that mimic the family.
Art doesn’t exist if you just do what you’re told. It only exists as an exercise of individual taste and freedom.
How will you know a good farmer when you meet him? He will not ask you for any favors.
Some people do wait their whole lives for something, and it’s only when that thing arrives that they find out that they’ve been waiting rather than living.
When a novel has 200,000 words, then it is possible for the reader to experience 200,000 delights, and to turn back to the first page of the book and experience them all over again, perhaps more intensely.
If there’s anything Trollope novels always take seriously, it is money – how it flows from one character to another, how it is managed, who has it, who deserves it, and what it means to a character, male or female.