I'm happy to be reminded that an ordinary day full of nothing but nothingness can make you feel like you've won the lottery.

Orchid hunting is a mortal occupation.

I think of myself as something of a connoisseur of procrastination, creative and dogged in my approach to not getting things done.

Living in a rural setting exposes you to so many marvelous things - the natural world and the particular texture of small-town life, and the exhilarating experience of open space.

You have to simply love writing, and you have to remind yourself often that you love it.

Libraries are what is best about us as a society: open, exciting, rich, informative, free, inclusive, engaging.

One of the very best reasons for having children is to be reminded of the incomparable joys of a snow day.

A snow day literally and figuratively falls from the sky, unbidden, and seems like a thing of wonder.

An ordinary life examined closely reveals itself to be exquisite and complicated and exceptional, somehow managing to be both heroic and plain.

There's a marvelous sense of mastery that comes with writing a sentence that sounds exactly as you want it to.

Even after I'd published three books and had been writing full-time for twenty years, my father continued to urge me to go to law school.

Togetherness is beating up an empty elevator.

If I am not worth the wooing I surely am not worth the winning.

Juvenile delinquency serves many purposes, including that of providing sadistic adults with fantasies suited to their special tastes.

In America, we have a government that is now run by white nationalists, by billionaires, by incredible misogynists.

I want to keep fighting because it's the only thing that keeps me out of the hamburger joints. If I don't fight, I'll eat this planet.

I was a big Michael Jordan fan growing up. I don't feel my game resembles his though.

I'm preparing to be a mother one day and I really wanted to get inside the mind of a mom.

Fear is the most easily taught of all lessons, and the fight against terror, real or imagined, is perhaps the history of man's mind.

part of the humor of living on this backward planet is listening to the hominids rationalize their predations.

At the bottom of enmity between strangers lies indifference.