You can't always trust what you think, what you know ... but you can always trust your nature.

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

For the most part wisdom comes in chips rather than blocks. You have to be willing to gather them constantly, and from sources you never imagined to be probable. No one chip gives you the answer for everything. No one chip stays in the same place throughout your entire life. The secret is to keep adding voices, adding ideas, and moving things around as you put together your life. If you’re lucky, putting together your life is a process that will last through every single day you’re alive.

I will write my way into another life.

I can write for any magazine now, in any voice. I can do it in two hours, I could do it in my sleep, it's like writing a grocery list.

The light was cut to lace by the trees that had grown so thick with leaves in the last few months.

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.