“You are thirst and thirst is all I know”

We have this huge discourse on family in this country, but no one deconstructs it the same way. People talk about “the American family.” The right wing has this thing – Focus on the Family. What the hell is that?

The heart can get really cold if all you’ve known is winter.

I wondered what that was like, to hold someone’s hand. I bet you could sometimes find all of the mysteries of the universe in someone’s hand.

I bring my best instincts to my work. For instance – and I come by this naturally, or I think I do – I am a very good judge of character.

But love was always something heavy for me. Something I had to carry.

I didn’t think it was my job to accept what everyone said I was and who I should be.

I don’t want to just discuss the issues – I want family to be a real part of the character of the novels I write, and I don’t like to write things that feel like issue books.

I wondered if my smile was as big as hers. Maybe as big. But not as beautiful.

I wondered about the science of storms and how sometimes it seemed that a storm wanted to break the world and how the world refused to break.

Absent parents aren’t abusive per se. They’re neglectful. They love in a very imperfect way. There are parents like that, and they do love their daughters and sons, but they’re not parents in the way that we might think of it.

Mostly, I think people are fake. Well, what do you expect? The fake world we live in conspires to make us all fakes.

Water was something he loved, something he respected. He understood its beauty and its dangers. He talked about swimming as if it were a way of life.

I do that with all of my characters. They have one of the flaws I have, and I zero in on that flaw.

I think writing books is a way for me to work out certain issues. I write about what matters to me, always.

If you can quit for a day, you can quit for a lifetime.

Another secret of the universe: Sometimes pain was like a storm that came out of nowhere. The clearest summer could end in a downpour. Could end in lightning and thunder.

Before GOD,no god,after him,there will be no GOD.

All I know to do with money is put it in a shoebox anyway.

Moving makes you feel all alone inside.

In the end, We’re all the same.

Men commit murder and all sorts of mayhem, in a few years they’re back on the streets.

I always think that there is the good and the bad of it all.

I don’t see myself as a diva at all.

All the children stood and gazed at it, loving it and longing to go to it. It looked so secret – almost magic.