My novels are very much the same, as I think many people's novels are.

I could teach. I could wait tables. I could cook in a restaurant. Food and teaching were the two skills I had.

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

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

Coming back is the thing that enables you to see how all the dots in your life are connected.

I wanted to eat her pain, take it into me and make it my own.

I should figure out why I'm so much more interested in doing something that I think is really hard. But, somehow, the thing that is hard for me feels more noble.