He was wondering if there was some cryptic, cultish mark on his door that told all the crazy people he'd have trouble saying no.

I have spent so long erecting partitions around the part of me that writes - learning how to close the door on it when ordinary lfe intervenes, how to close the door on ordinary life when it's time to start writing again - that I'm not sure I could fit the two parts of me back together now.

People who hadn't suffered a loss yet struck me as not quite grown up.

He wished he had inhabited more of his life, used it better, filled it fuller.

The hardest novel to write was Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant.

Just because we're related doesn't mean we are any good at understanding each other.

I think it must be very hard to be one of the new young writers who are urged to put themselves forward when it may be the last thing on earth they'd be good at