“It’s my policy not to review funerals.”

People should pay more attention. Everyone wants attention, but no one wants to give attention.

I am very interested in loyalty, even if the person to whom one is loyal is flawed, criminal, or otherwise in the wrong.

I liked the fact she understood how we all have little secret habits that seem normal enough to us, but which we know better than to mention out loud.

It annoys the hell out of me when people say, This is the kitchen, and this is the bathroom. What am I, Helen Keller? I mean, it’s pretty obvious when you’re in a kitchen and when you’re not.

Sometimes you can do things for others that you can’t do for yourself.

If you don’t write the book you have to write, everything breaks.

A lot of people get flipped out if you’re quiet. They say stuff like, What are you thinking? And if they don’t start interrogating you, they start talking, going on and on about stuff that’s totally irrelevant, and the silence gets so big and loud that it’s scary.

Books tell you more about their owners than the owners do.

The world of Shirley Jackson is eerie and unforgettable.

You really can’t write well if you’re thinking about what the reviewers might say.

I’m very interested in compassion – compassion for oneself and others. I write about very complicated characters and experiences and try to do it without judging the character or the action.

I’m nothing you can catch now. I am black powder, I am singe, I am the bomb that bursts the night.

I’d say our ability to supersize emotions are American-made special effects. In European countries, people mostly stay close to home and whatever rage there is simmers under the surface – it’s what made the plays of Shakespeare and Harold Pinter so good.

Was this the big one or was this the small tremor, the warning? Does it get better – does the sensation of being in a dream underwater go away?

Funeral pomp is more for the vanity of the living than for the honor of the dead.

Let no one weep for me, or celebrate my funeral with mourning; for I still live, as I pass to and fro through the mouths of men.

It’s crazy, but even at funerals, people will get huge laughs.

Whenever my patient begins to count the carriages in her funeral procession I subtract 50 per cent from the curative power of medicines.

Fame is an undertaker that pays but little attention to the living, but bedizens the dead, furnishes out their funerals, and follows them to the grave

The time to hesitate is through no time to wallowin the mire Try now we can only lose and our love become a funeral pyre

Funerals are important rituals. They don’t just recognize that a life has ended; they recognize that a life was lived.

Life is lived on its ownother’s shoulders are used only at the time of funeral.