I read so I can live more than one life in more than one place.
I'm beginning to think that maybe it's not just how much you love someone. Maybe what matters is who you are when you're with them.
It is very difficult to live among people you love and hold back from offering them advice.
I've never quite believed that one chance is all I get
The one ironclad rule is that I have to try. I have to walk into my writing room and pick up my pen every weekday morning.
Ah, God, it's barbaric, however you look at it,' he told Ruth. 'What, cremation?' she asked. 'Death.
It seems to me that since I've had children, I've grown richer and deeper. They may have slowed down my writing for a while, but when I did write, I had more of a self to speak from.
It struck her all at once that dealing with other human beings was an awful lot of work.
Pauline believed that marriage was an interweaving of souls, while Michael viewed it as two people traveling side by side but separately. “What are you thinking about?” she liked to say, and “Tell me what you honestly feel.
... didn't paintings lie also? They showed hours instead of minutes.
I spend about a year between novels.
I never think about the actual process of writing. I suppose I have a superstition about examining it too closely.
While armchair travelers dream of going places, traveling armchairs dream of staying put.
I can never tell ahead of time which book will give me trouble - some balk every step of the way, others seem to write themselves - but certainly the mechanics of writing, finding the time and the psychic space, are easier now that my children are grown.
I've always enjoyed studying the small clues that indicate a particular class level.
My family can always tell when I'm well into a novel because the meals get very crummy.
I'll write maybe one long paragraph describing the events, then a page or two breaking the events into chapters, and then reams of pages delving into my characters. After that, I'm ready to begin.
I do write long, long character notes - family background, history, details of appearance - much more than will ever appear in the novel. I think this is what lifts a book from that early calculated, artificial stage.
Not until the final draft do I force myself to remember that I'm going to have to think about how it will affect other people.
The hardest novel to write was Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant.
