These were wise, modern children, and they knew: a mother could be a witch, a child could be a criminal. A librarian could be a thief.

Like a good American, I wanted to sue somebody. But like a good librarian, I just sat at my desk and waited.

When you talk to an author - to any artist, really - you learn something about how they do what they do. I've never come away from that kind of experience feeling disillusioned, as if the magician had explained his tricks. I always find a greater appreciation for the form.

Sometimes I wish I could go back through time to meet Proust, just so I could give him my asthma inhaler. The poor guy.

Writing a short story is like painting a picture on the head of a pin. And just getting everything to fit is - sometimes seems impossible. Writing a novel, though, is - has its own challenges of scope. And I think of that as painting a mural, where the challenge is that if you are close enough to work on it, you're too close to see the whole thing.

I did teach elementary school for quite a while, and so I didn't have to reach too far back for the titles and authors that populate the early chapters 'of The Borrower.'