I don't want to stand with somebody's praise.

[I remember going] to a hotel gym at six o'clock in the morning, and the television was on, and it's some drama in which two men have clearly kidnapped a woman. They're interrogating her, and they put a plastic bag over her head. They're suffocating her, and I'm thinking, It's six o'clock in the morning! Why does anybody need to see this? How can I find the off switch?

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

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

He doesn’t know to want for more because nothing in his life has been as much as this...on that night he thinks that no one has ever had so much and only later will he know he should have asked for more.

Reading fiction is important. It is a vital means of imagining a life other than our own, which in turn makes us more empathetic beings. Following complex story lines stretches our brains beyond the 140 characters of sound-bite thinking, and staying within the world of a novel gives us the ability to be quiet and alone, two skills that are disappearing faster than the polar icecaps.

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.