Every dude in your high school wasn't striving to be the best poet because then he'd get all the girls, right? But you could imagine a society in which that were the case.

Somehow, you can achieve a directness in the novel that you can't get anywhere else.

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.

It is no fun at all to have been writing a book for seven or so years, especially when you've never published anything before.

It remained an open question, how much sympathy love could stand.

Another older writer that had a huge influence on me is Chekhov. More contemporarily, it's hard to say.

You are skilled. I exhort you.