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.

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

To be misunderstood can be the writer's punishment for having disturbed the reader's peace. The greater the disturbance, the greater the possibility of misunderstanding.

The first divorce in the world may have been a tragedy, but the hundred-millionth is not necessarily one.

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.

Ruefulness is one of the classical tones of American fiction. It fosters a native, deglamorized form of anxiety.

A book is meant not only to be read, but to haunt you, to importune you like a lover or a parent, to be in your teeth like a piece of gristle.