I have always known that writing fiction had little effect on the world; that if it did, young men would not have gone to war after The Iliad.

I see a lot of marriages crash and burn around me and my wife. I've always been curious about how hard it is to love well and be loved.

I have always known that writing fiction had little effect on the world; that if it did, young men would not have gone to war after The Iliad.

That was the source of my vanity and my cowardice: always I believed everyone was watching me.

I think the writer's job is to paint the gray because no life is clearly defined.

I think what I love most [about writing] is that feeling that you really nailed something. Sometimes with a line you feel that it really captured what it is that you had inside you and you got it out for a stranger to read, someone who may never love you or meet you, but he or she is going to get that experience from that line.

As a matter of writing philosophy, if there is one, I try not to ever plot a story. I try to write it from the character's point of view and see where it goes.