I don't believe in fate, as in, which I - as a Catholic, I think, sort of predestination. But I certainly believe in chance.

The thing you can count on in life is that Tennessee will always be scorching hot in August.

I saw that my best work was my most personal work, which is odd, because my fiction is very far afield and has nothing to do with my life.

[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?

When you get divorced and remarried, nobody gets discarded. Everybody is still there. Even if their storyline is not directly yours.

I used to do everything to keep a wall up around myself and keep my life quiet so that I could write.

Maybe the private life wasn't forever. Maybe everyone got it for a little while and then spent the rest of their lives remembering.