Updike and Bellow and Roth were my three favorite writers when I was young and throughout my life.

He realized now he was only just beginning to see the full extent to which it was his destiny to follow, to walk blindly into fates he could never understand. In fate there was reward, in turning over one's heart to God there was a magnificence that lay beyond description. At the moment one is sure that all is lost, look at what is gained!

I am the person who is appropriating stories that are not mine and turning them into a book.

You can't be a good person when you're writing and a bad person to your husband or a bad friend.

I don't believe in fate, as in, which I - as a Catholic, I think, sort of predestination. But I certainly believe in chance.

reading is a private act, private even from the person who wrote the book. Once the novel is out there, the author is beside the point. The reader and the book have their own relationship now, and should be left alone to work things out for themselves.

That's the way I work. I get it all plotted in my mind, and then I write it down.