I always used to be an inside person, and now I'm an outside person.

It's always better to have too much to read than not enough.

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.

I can't write the book I want to write, but I can and will write the book I am capable of writing.

We have different kinds of intimacy with many, many people. I'm disappointed by well-written novels that only deal with two or three people.

Nonfiction is easy and fiction is hard.

Everybody believes in chance.