Heightism is the last unchecked prejudice.

We are surrounded by story.

It now appears that the world is filled with people who believe that everyone should be interested in everything they have to say about anything - people who tweet, you might call them. I find this so astonishing, my own hubris pales in comparison.

Language is the writer's only tool - we really don't have anything else - but our language contains within it our entire experience of the world.

As a writer, I'm too busy and worried to experience the delight while composing my own work, although, of course, I hope a reader will find something of it when the work is complete. But I do try to figure out where in their experiences certain characters of mine, who are not necessarily readers, and certainly not writers or artists, find an equivalent sensation: of delight, of astonishment, of whatever it is that briefly - and brevity seems essential - reassures us, connects us, sends a shiver of inarticulate recognition down our spines: Oh, yes: life.

A book tour is, first and foremost, an exercise in humility.

When I'm not writing, I can't make sense of out anything. I feel the need to make some sense and find some order, and writing fiction is the only way I've found that seems to begin to do that.