Time is anonymous; when we give it a face, it's the same face the world over.

The writing of a novel is taking life as it already exists, not to report it but to make an object, toward the end that the finished work might contain this life inside it, and offer it to the reader.

She knew now to look slowly and carefully at a face; she was convinced that it was impossible to see it all at once.

Long before I wrote stories, I listened for stories.

From the first I was clamorous to learn ...

I learned from the age of two or three that any room in our house, at any time of day, was there to be read in, or to be read to. My mother read to me.

... the reverence I felt for the holiness of life is not ever likely to be entirely at home in organized religion.