The epic implications of being human end in more than this: We start our lives as if they were momentous stories, with a beginning, a middle and an appropriate end, only to find that they are mostly middles.

People ... have no idea what a hard job it is for two writers to be friends. Sooner or later you have to talk about each other's work.

The more I like a book, the more reluctant I am to turn the page. Lovers, even book lovers, tend to cling. No one-night stands or "reads" for them.

Aphorisms are bad for novels. They stick in the reader's teeth.

There are few things more subtly distressing than an inappropriate gift from someone close to you.

Either a writer doesn't want to talk about his work, or he talks about it more than you want.

Sex almost always disappoints me in novels. Everything can be said or done now, and that's what I often find: everything, a feeling of generality or dispersal. But in my experience, true sex is so particular, so peculiar to the person who yearns for it. Only he or she, and no one else, would desire so very much that very person under those circumstances. In fiction, I miss that sense of terrific specificity.