My sentences got sharper and my stories more efficient, and I gradually learned to imagine the reader more clearly and to empathize with that imagine….

I first started writing fiction in college because I was attracted to beautiful sentences. I loved to read them. I wanted to write them..

Sometimes death is proof of life. Sometimes decay points out a certain verve..

If I read a scary story in the newspaper, I find I'm haunted by it..

I kept quiet, but the knowledge gathered like a storm. I could see the future: My father wasn't coming back. And this one fact seemed to point to oth….

I'm an only child, and I think one of the sweet things about that is that my parents are really interested in every aspect of my life..

Working as an editor was like being a professional reader, and the better I became at reading the better I became at writing..

I just hope that readers and publishers continue to appreciate good writing and good storytelling in all their various forms. And I hope that people ….

I feel like writing a book there's always a version in your head that's an amazing version, but then you write the version that you can write..

I guess it never is what you worry over that comes to pass in the end. The real catastrophes are always different—unimagined, unprepared for, unknown..

I've become a collector of stories about unlikely returns: the sudden reappearance of the long-lost son, the father found, the lovers reunited after ….

Sometimes I think I might not have written 'The Age of Miracles' if I hadn't grown up in California, if I hadn't been exposed to its very particular ….

This was middle school, the age of miracles, the time when kids shot up three inches over the summer, when breasts bloomed from nothing, when voices ….

A good story, just like a good sentence, does more than one job at once. That's what literature is: a story that does more than tell a story, a story….

How much sweeter life would be if it all happened in reverse, if, after decades of disappointments, you finally arrived at an age when you had conced….

Just like all great stories, our fears focus our attention on a question that is as important in life as it is in literature: What will happen next?.

An editor is like a professional reader, and as I became a better reader, I also became a better writer..

Sometimes the saddest stories take the fewest words..

My goal was just to tell the unlikely story in a way that would feel as convincing as possible..

To be a good editor or a good writer, I think you really need to be a great reader first..

I can write all the way through the morning, when my mind is clear, and there are no distractions..