“Every novel is—at the beginning—the same opening of a door onto a completely unknown space.”

I have a sister named Alice who’s only eight months older than I am. The reason for this eludes most people. My parents adopted Alice before they figured out my mother was already pregnant

My great-aunt Eva had patience as if she could wait for eternity; that was why, when she died, mean and ugly and absorbed by her pain, and we buried her in the family plot in an August heat wave, everyone

Writers are scavengers. We pick at any flesh on the bones that will feed our stories. We are hoarders of the gritty details of people’s lives.