The quality of gifts depends on the sincerity of the giver.

I think people become consumed with selling a book when they need to be consumed with writing it.

People always say, "Can writing be taught?" I always think, I can teach you how to write a better sentence, how to do dialogue, how to do character, but I can't teach you how to be a decent person, and I can't teach you how to have something to say.

I'm very sentimental about lobsters. The last lobster I ate was the only lobster I cooked.

I was very influenced by The Magic Mountain. It's a book that had a huge impact on me. I loved that as a shape for a novel: put a bunch of people in a beautiful place, give them all tuberculosis, make them all stay in a fur sleeping bag for several years and see what happens.

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.

It was never the right time or it was always the right time, depending on how you looked at it.