"I don't want to say I hear voices; well, actually I do hear voices, but I don't think it's supernatural. I think it's just that when characters are given enough texture and backbone, then lo and behold, they stand on their own."

"I never think about the actual process of writing. I suppose I have a superstition about examining it too closely."

"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."

"I think it must be very hard to be one of the new young writers who are urged to put themselves forward when it may be the last thing on earth they'd be good at"

"You think we're a family,' Cody said, turning back. 'You think we're some jolly, situation-comedy family when we're in particles, torn apart, torn all over the place, and our mother was a witch."

"I mean you're given all these lessons for the unimportant things--piano-playing, typing. You're given years and years of lessons in how to balance equations, which Lord knows you will never have to do in normal life. But how about parenthood? Or marriage, either, come to think of it. Before you can drive a car you need a state-approved course of instruction, but driving a car is nothing, nothing, compared to living day in and day out with a husband and raising up a new human being."

"I love to think about chance - about how one little overheard word, one pebble in a shoe, can change the universe."

"I think I was born with the impression that what happened in books was much more reasonable, and interesting, and real, in some ways, than what happened in life."

"But I don't think people take bad advice. They've got intuition too, you know. In fact I'd be surprised if they take any advice at all."