We are taught to be suspicious, especially of anyone who might not look like us or share our beliefs.

I don't write for an audience, I don't think whether my book will sell, I don't sell it before I finish writing it.

I think, if you want to grow a novelist, for that person to have a lot of boring time trying to entertain themselves is very important.

I love a large cast of characters. That's the way life is: it's flooded with people and we keep them all straight.

In this life we love who we love. There were some stories in which facts were very nearly irrelevant.

The love between humans is the thing that nails us to the earth.

I saw that my best work was my most personal work, which is odd, because my fiction is very far afield and has nothing to do with my life.