I do think that sports is really rich dramatically that, and this is kind of a self-serving thing to say, but I wonder why there aren't more, better sports novels.

Fiction and nonfiction, for me, involve very different processes.

The challenge for any fiction writer is that your job involves simply sitting at a desk for a very, very long time.

The idea of the writer who writes nineteen novels, with various ups and downs and levels of experimentation, isn't around so much now. There's a focus, I think, on fewer books, with more pressure on each book to succeed. With that there comes, I think, a certain pressure towards shapeliness in fiction. Towards neatness. And I think writers feel that, and it can effect how they write.

I sold a book six years after I left an MFA program. In between, there was a lot of endurance of poverty and a lot of fighting off doubt. It's all a part of the process of being or becoming a writer.

Most writers, most books, you have no idea whether it was a dollar or a million dollars.

A lot of my close friends had tolerantly washed their hands of the whole idea of me writing a book. They had said to themselves, "I don't know what he's doing."