My preference is for prose with more silence in it, language that contains more pockets of strangeness.

My sister-in-law is a painter, and I'll say, how long did it take you to paint that painting. She'll say, It took me maybe three days, but it took me all my life to get the skills to paint that painting.

I went to Europe three times, I read dozens and dozens of books, I studied thousands of photos. But I always supplemented that research with imagination; research might give you detail, but imagination supplies the direction in which to apply all that detail.

I write reviews of science books for the Boston Globe, so I like to give science books.

Short stories are wonderful and extremely challenging, and the joy of them, because it only takes me three or four months to write, I can take more risks with them. It's just less of your life invested.

Watching teething babies is like watching over a thermonuclear reactor-it is best done in shifts, by well-rested people.

I've been getting into Nick Drake lately, the folk singer. Sad, gorgeous stuff.