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

Keeping people safe is a story we tell ourselves.

If someone loves you for what you can do then it's flattering, but why do you love them? If someone loves you for who you are then they have to know you, which means you have to know them.

He believed that life, true life, was something that was stored in music. True life was kept safe in the lines of Tchaikovsky's Eugene Onegin while you went out in the world and met the obligations required of you. Certainly he knew (though did not completely understand) that opera wasn't for everyone, but for everyone he hoped there was something. The records he cherished, the rare opportunities to see a live performance, those were the marks by which he gauged his ability to love.

Why is it that we understand playing the cello will require work, but we attribute writing to the magic of inspiration?

Everyone knows everything eventually.

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.