Quote

The best book, like the best speech, will do it all - make us laugh, think, cry and cheer - preferably in that order.

Reading is a conversation. All books talk. But a good book listens as well.

A great speech is literature.

I am really into how words sound out loud, so I was always the kid who would, like, read the page of the book to herself in her room over and over and over. And Raymond Carver is great for that. Tobias Wolff is an author who is really good for that as well.

Well see, I'm a good enough writer that not everybody in my books talks exactly like I do.

The more I like a book, the more slowly I read. this spontaneous talking back to a book is one of the things that makes reading so valuable.

I decided to write a book primarily because people talked me into it.

When I was younger, I was full of smart things to say about all my books.

That's why people read books. You get to have the real conversation, as opposed to the pseudo-conversations we have in everyday life.

It's such a joy to talk to a roomful of people who have read my novel and are eager to talk about it.