我
The people in my stories are not heroes or villains. They are just people trying to get through life.
I don't write to explain. I write to explore.
The past is always with us, and it's always more complicated than we think.
I don't think I'm a writer who's interested in answers. I'm interested in questions.
We don't ever let go of anything, we just go on to the next thing.
Loneliness is the poverty of self; solitude is the richness of self.
Writing is the only thing I've ever done with persistence, except for being married.
The fundamental fact about all of us is that we're alive for a while but will die before long.
The first lesson reading teaches is how to be alone.
Life is a thousand-petaled lotus; by refusing to bloom, I also refuse to wither.
The stories are not autobiographical, but they're personal in that way. I seem to know only the things that I've learned. Probably some things through observation, but what I feel I know surely is personal.
I want the reader to feel something is astonishing—not the 'what happens' but the way everything happens.
We say of some things that they can't be forgiven, or that we will never forgive ourselves. But we do—we do it all the time.
"Books are like rivers that flow into the sea of our consciousness."
"To be a writer is to acknowledge the secret wounds that we carry inside."
"I read a book one day and my whole life was changed."
That is what we have to do in life: to take the great wounds and the little scratches and keep on going.