Wisdom of the Ages

From Sofie & Cecilia author Katherine Ashenburg

What advice do you wish you’d given your 25-year-old self? Ask more questions.

What advice would you give your 80-year-old self? Enjoy all the adventures possible in this “if-not-nowthen-when?” period.

What do you know for sure? What the poet John Keats called “the holiness of the heart’s affections.” What have you learned? That every life, no matter how quiet it looks on the surface, is full of stories.

What will you never learn? How to do more than half-a-dozen things on my cellphone.

Best piece of advice? Always ask for more money. People don’t value what they get cheaply. (From my practical, realist mother.) Did it work? No.

What inspires you? Reading great writers. And the looks on my grandchildren’s faces when I read to them.

The moment that changed everything? When I learned that Sofie & Cecilia, my first novel, was going to be published.

Happiness is … See above. Also, drinking my one-and-only cup of strong coffee early in the morning in my verdant garden.