I miss art. I miss art. Life would be worth living if I had art.

A good novel doesn’t just transcend the boundaries of its target market – it knows nothing about target markets.

…even a poisoned, desolate childhood can be missed.

Even if their supplies of love are finite, they’ve figured out that life is, too, and they’re no longer rationing.

And I know I’m supposed to feel guilty for wanting people to buy my books… and books in general? Novels and poetry, they belong to the realm of art. How dirty of us to try...

The ugliness is what makes the beautiful things beautiful.

Basically if you burst into my office the walls themselves will flutter as if alive – maybe that’s the reason for all the wings in ‘Pure.’

If home isn’t a place, what is it?”A feeling.

Here, falling in love can be an event, a proclamation without acknowledging that everyone you love could die an awful death, that loving someone is an acceptance of impending loss.

It’s not that I bounce ideas off of my children as much as it is that having children has had a profound effect on the way I see the world. They have mined my soul....

—Mira, no entiendo todo lo que hemos pasado juntos, lo que significa todo esto. Pero lo que sí sé… —Se enjuga una lágrima de la cara—, lo que sé es que algún día lo echaré...

Don’t shame the young for releasing their pent-up fear.

Sometimes the only way to fix a mistake- is to make it twice.

She let him go once. Every day demands that she release him over and over again.

I’m a woman, but I’ve been a sexist, too.

I prefer true over happy now.

I am deeply Catholic and always will be, but I’m no longer a member of the church. I left in 2003 because of the sex abuse scandal.

Love is a luxury. It’s something that people are allowed to indulge in when they’re not simply trying to survive and keep other people alive.

Weakness, like not being able to bury the past. Weakness, like not giving up hope when you know you should.

I write across genres so I see them, more often, as complementary instead of separated by boundaries.

[She] knows that it’s fear that keeps her love in check. But what if falling in love is a sign not of weakness but of courage? What if it isnt falling or crashing but taking...

The basic rule of storytelling is ‘show, don’t tell.’

But there it is: Everyone is alone, for life, and maybe that’s not such a bad thing.

While I was in college becoming a good Catholic I was also becoming a writer – one haunted by Catholicism.

But she’s still afraid that the more she misses him–his face, his skin, the way he looked at her–and the more hope she has that she’ll see him again, the more she has to lose.

I always think I know the way a novel will go. I write maps on oversized art pads like the kind I carried around in college when I was earnest about drawing. I need to...

I am politically pro-choice, but personally pro-life. I have my faith but refuse to force it on the world at large – especially this world, so brutal and unjust. I cannot make these wrenching personal...

As a writer, my main objective is to tell the story urgently – as if whispering it into one ear – and to know the characters intimately.

I’ve never thought there was anything I could hope to get by praying for it.

I didn’t start writing so that I could more deeply know myself. I was bored of myself, my life, my childhood, my hometown. I started writing as a way to know others, to get away...

Red Sox fans have been pushed to the brink over the years, but that’s how faith grows stronger.

I prefer a cluttered workspace.

When I first met you, I thought we were made for each other even though we seemed like opposites in some ways and we fought. But now…””What?””Now I feel like we weren’t made for each...

I’m a writer of faith who worries about the intolerance of religion. I look at the past and fear we haven’t learned from it. I believe that humanity is capable of evil as well as...

Writers are socially observant. We find people endlessly fascinating, and real life is mysterious. Sometimes it’s hard to stop staring at the strut and squawk of my fellow man. They can be quite inspiring. Sometimes...

Writers aren’t born properly labeled so it is hard to know one when one appears.

Una sensación etérea en la barriga y el corazón aporreándole el pecho como si se estuviera cayendo, y cayendo.

What does it mean to be Catholic and not a Catholic? I feel adrift, homeless. My Catholic imagination allows me to see the soul as a lit breath, seeking the divine. It persists.

No matter what losses happen in a given season, the Red Sox always have next year.

Writing stories is the habit of lying put to good use.

I feel too much. It’s like being drummed to death from within. You know?

I’m not the kind of writer who’s able to block out the world around me. I’m mindful of our own haves and have-nots, how our culture often blames and punishes the have-nots. I worry about...

Writing is my obsession, my passion. My relationship with it is one of the most complex and agonizing and richly vexing that I have in my life.

Our imaginations are strong as children. Sometimes they get shoved aside, these imaginations. They get dusty and mildewed with age. The imagination is a muscle that has to be put to use or it shrivels.

Our stories preserve us. we give them to one another. Our stories have value. Do you understand?

The truth is that for those 86 long years when the Red Sox went without a World Series win, fans were not only in a recession, but trapped in a longstanding, deeply entrenched sports depression.

If I’d learned nothing else, it was this: If you want to be a great writer, be a man. If you can’t be a man, write like one.