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" I don't really like questions about the writing process, because the truth is I don't know how I write. "

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" No matter what kind of writing you do, it's always the details that make the story. "

" I love to listen to people talk, especially when they're being really honest and they're not trying to sound any particular way. "

" I never meant to write about the experience of losing a good friend to breast cancer when I was going through it. But after it was over, I realized that although something deeply sad had happened, something truly beautiful also had. "

" When I write a book, I don't have an idea of what I'm doing. I just go where it leads. "

" Writers have a reputation for being distracted. That's because writers are distracted. They are always tuned into that other voice, the one in their head that rarely turns off. "

" In the most self-protective of ways, I don't think about the reader when I'm writing - I just think about the story. "

" I've always felt an overwhelming need to get out what was inside. The vehicle for me was words on paper - not speech, not art, not dance, not anything else. "

" Ideas come from life: what happens in mine, what I see happening in others', mixed with a great deal of imagination. I might see a person in a grocery store and build a whole character and life out of what's in her basket. "

" In this wide world, I don't think that there's just one person for any of us. I think we look until we find one that feels right, and oftentimes, it works out just fine. "

" I look to find the heart and soul of people, of my characters. I look for the truth of them and the truths about life that are presented through them. "

" As for my 'real life,' yes, I do have friends who are different from me, and I find it refreshing being around them. "

" I got married at twenty-five and had children right away, so I didn't have the worry that I would never get to have children. "

" You need a place to work that works for you, and you need people to understand that when you are writing, you are doing a rarefied type of brain surgery and therefore should not be subject to a million random interruptions. "

" With 'Durable Goods,' I meant only to write about being an army brat. What emerged was a story about compassion - the need for it, the expression of it. "

" A ritual or tradition can be as simple as something you do every night, like read a story to a small child, or something you do weekly, such as go out for Chinese food. "

" I have always believed in helping people whose work I admire. "

" Writing was always a release for me, a great joy. It wasn't work. "

" Life is so fragile, so brief. And we seemingly work so hard at trying to ignore that. "

" You should not pay too much attention to what anyone tells you, including me. It's very, very important to follow your own map. "

" Never try to copy other writers, and never try to have a formula. It has to come from your heart and soul. "

" It feels like my books come true. I write these things, and then they kind of end up happening. I wasn't divorced, for example, when I wrote a book about divorce. "

" My favorite splurge is homemade chocolate cake and vanilla ice cream or a Sausage McMuffin with egg or scalloped potatoes or turkey yanked right off the carcass and dipped in gravy or See's chocolate. "

" My mom used to keep all her Christmas cards in a basket bedecked with red ribbon, and I loved to look at them all and read all the letters. "

" It is a happy day when I am asked to publicly recommend a book. It is also a dilemma. When I consider all the books I have loved and depended upon and profited from, how can I pick just one? "

" As we continue to become a society of tweets, shorter and shorter messages, there's great value in the contemplation and reflection that comes from reading a long body of work. "

" Every book is its own experience, the writing of it. "

" I don't have a medicine cabinet. "

" Ultimately, the less I know about what I'm doing, the better the work is. "

" For me as a writer, it's so joyful to know that someone hears and responds to what I write. "

" If there were a category in the Olympics for laundry, my mother would have been a gold-medal winner. "