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" Really, my sacred place is my study where there are books that I love and things that people have given me. "

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" 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. "

" Traditions insist upon themselves. Look around, and you will see them trying to exist everywhere, in everyone's life. "

" People see 'tradition' as something stultifying, old, and rigid, nothing that has meaning or application for us today. But families shouldn't have to follow the blueprint of the old. They can make family traditions out of whatever makes them feel comfortable and helps bring a sense of order and stability to their lives. "

" If I'm on the road for Random House, I'm presenting a book with the hope people will buy it. "

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

" No matter what you write, you need an active imagination. "

" We're not just writers; we're readers probably more than anything else. That's how you learn how to write and how you learn to appreciate good writing: by reading. "

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

" If I don't feel like writing on a certain day, I just go to the cafe and hang around. "

" As a child, I saw my mother prepare for Christmas every year, and it never occurred to me that labor was involved. I thought it was my mother's joy and privilege to hang tinsel on the tree strand by strand, to make sure that every room in the house had a touch of Christmas, down to the Santa-themed rug and hand towels in the bathroom. "

" I tend not to write books that are really, really long, and I'm also a pretty fast writer. "

" I know that sometimes it happens that a novelist is embarrassed about their early works. For me, it's the opposite: I believe 'Durable Goods' is the best thing I've written. "

" When I lived alone in Chicago, I had a lot of loneliness issues. "

" Not being as self-contained as men, we need to share things: It's almost as though you only know what you feel about things after you share them with a woman. "

" I'm the kind of person who is entertained watching someone simply be themselves, whether they're putting their children to bed or making dinner or sitting at the table reading the morning newspaper. "

" 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. "

" The process of writing and creating and answering that very unique call inside yourself has nothing to do with agents and sales and all that stuff. "

" 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. "

" I think conflict is one of the things that makes for a good story. "

" Sometimes the best reading comes just by accident. Someone talks about a book, or you're just wandering the stacks in the library, and you find a book that you love. "

" As for the notion that everything has already been said, maybe it has, but life is like meatloaf: there are so many different ways to present it. "

" 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? "

" 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. "

" I've been to Iowa many times before. You have to love Iowa, or you're not an American. "

" I find life a mix of humor and pathos, and all my books reflect that to one degree or another. "

" My mother and her five sisters have always been living examples of the great love that can exist among sisters - and in a large family. "

" I always wrote as a vehicle for expression but did not try writing for publication until my mid-thirties, at which time I started writing for magazines. I wrote essays and then short stories, then moved into novels. "

" The process is different for every book, but there are similarities. I always draw from the inside out. I don't plot them ahead of time, and I'm always surprised by things that happen in my books. "

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

" I hope to show the great worth of women. So far as I'm concerned, we're still underappreciated. "