“Energy has to be fed from a source. If you don’t feed the source, it dissipates entirely.”

If only men came made to order. It’s so hard to find a decent fellow.

Everything has to be clean and orderly when I sit down to write.

I don’t settle in any other area of my life when it comes to excellence, so why should I lower my standards when it comes to boys?

Those who want to know the facts, and those who want to make up a nice story to feel better.

I like it when my mother smiles. And I especially like it when I make her smile.

Maybe a first love exists to reaffirm the best parts of yourself, the choices you made when you didn’t worry about the consequences.

Ireland has never been more beautiful – the perfect setting for this story filled with humor, hope and possibility.

That’s when you know for sure somebody loves you.

If a man walks in beauty, he will create, and when he creates, he prospers.

A handwritten letter carries a lot of risk. It’s a one-sided conversation that reveals the truth of the writer.

Isn’t this the truth of any good mother? That in all of our lives.

The table is where the big decisions of the family are made and all the arguing takes place.

Love has a funny way of showing up when you aren’t looking for it and didn’t plan on it.

I’m writing novels because I found something I love because I tried it. Don’t be afraid to shake it up.

Don’t worry about bad things that haven’t happened yet. It will save you a lot of anxiety.

Looking back, now, I realize that you only ever need one person who lights up that way when you enter a room.

My father was a very religious person. And he prayed five times a day. And he did that throughout his relationship with Ataturk.

I have always had strong maternal instincts.

I was nineteen and I put a bowl on and I said, Cut around! Because it was not the fashion at the time when I did that hairdo – and I kept it all my life!

There is something fearfully strengthening about cutting free even if the ties bandage the heart itself.

In [family snapshots] the flow of profane time has been stopped and a sacred interval of self-conscious revelation has been cut from it by the edge of the picture frame and the light of the sun or the flash.

A decade of cutting away dead flesh, cauterizing old scars ripped open over and over and still it is not enough.

Each of us is carving a stone, erecting a column, or cutting a piece of stained glass in the construction of something much bigger than ourselves.

I’ve never really felt that I’ve had the right hair cut, or had the right clothes.