I tended to write the book in these bursts of two or three months at a time. So I would know, or at least feel securely, that for the next few months I was at least going to have a few hours a day.

A lot of writers choose to live in New York, partly because of the literary culture here, and partly because Brooklyn's a pretty nice place to live. And a lot of writers who might not geographically reside in New York still point their ambitions towards New York in some sense.

It was strange the way he loved her; a side long and almost casual love, as if loving her were simply a matter of course, too natural to mention.

Getting your foot in the door with some publishing people can be important when you're starting out as a writer, but it's also not enough to get you where you need to be.

Looking at and shaping your own work is a very intuitive process. You see something you've written in your notebook. It's there on the page and either feels right or it doesn't, and it's hard sometimes to go beyond that and discover why it feels that way.

... people loved to suffer, as long as the suffering made sense. Everybody suffered. The key was to choose the form of your suffering.

The novel has always been the form that incorporates other forms. For me, it has always been the ultimate medium.