I know where I'm going. And if I don't know where I'm going, I don't tend to get anywhere.

Using your imagination is the one time in life you can really go anywhere.

Anytime you write about priests or cops, they're hot-button professions.

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.

Some people are born to make great art and others are born to appreciate it. … It is a kind of talent in itself, to be an audience, whether you are the spectator in the gallery or you are listening to the voice of the world's greatest soprano. Not everyone can be the artist. There have to be those who witness the art, who love and appreciate what they have been privileged to see.

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

There can be something cruel about people who have had good fortune. They equate it with personal goodness.