Elizabeth McCracken

“Tweeting about objects means I don't need to bid on them, which is a blessing. Buying something is a way of saying, 'Look at this!' So is tweeting. So, I guess, is writing fiction.”

“It's hard to know which made me more aware of the impossibility of protecting children - having a child die or having had two live.”

“The idea of a library full of books, the books full of knowledge, fills me with fear and love and courage and endless wonder.”

“I'm a higgledy-piggledy person in every way. On days that I work, I work for eight hours in a row, with my internet access entirely turned off, locked in my office.”

“I sort of don't believe in closure. In the sense that it doesn't make me feel better to think that something is over.”

“Can I tell you something? It wasn't so bad. Not so bad at all right then, me scowling at the dirt, James in his bed, the way it always always was. Look, if that's all that happened, if his dying just meant that I would be waiting for him to say something instead of listening to him say something, it would have been fine.”

“I have a memory of my fourth-grade self wanting to be the first woman president of the United States, but I think that has a lot more to do with my love of world records and reference books than a love of serving my country.”

“When it comes to other people's writing, my older influences are more powerful than more recent ones, partially because I'm now more worried that I'll suddenly accidentally steal something from another writer.”

“I have been the person who tries to keep conversation light while talking to someone whose heart has been smashed.”

“Once I started writing novels, I understood how hard it was to write really good short stories.”

“Grief lasts longer than sympathy, which is one of the tragedies of the grieving.”

“Library books were, I suddenly realized, promiscuous, ready to lie down in the arms of anyone who asked. Not like bookstore books, which married their purchasers, or were brokered for marriages to others.”

“I always want the last line to be really good, which may sound silly, but I want it to be a last pleasing line.”

“In general, I think people are worried about saying the wrong thing to any grieving person. On a very basic level, I think they're frightened of touching off tears or sorrow, as though someone tearing up at the mention of unhappy news would be the mentioner's fault.”

“When I tell people there are three stories in 'Thunderstruck' that were from the same wrecked novel, they want to guess what they are. Nobody has. There are no characters or timelines in common. They're structured very differently. A good novel wouldn't have pulled apart so easily.”

“You believe in God or statistics or the way your narrative differs from other people.”

“The walls of the Franciscan Church of the Assumption of the Holy Virgin Mary were ruined stucco chipping away from the brick underneath, with ghostly frescoes, concrete-filled niches, and one complete, vivid crucifix painted over the altar.”

“You write the way you think about the world. My motto in times of trouble - and I'm speaking of life, not writing - is 'no humor too black.'”

“Acknowledgment of grief - well, it makes feeling the grief easier, not harder.”

“For about half an hour in mid-1992, I knew as much as any layperson about the pleasures of remote access of other people's computers.”