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

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.

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.

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

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.

There are things you do when you're writing that are so fun to do it's almost like they're private jokes that are amusing to you but no one else is going to enjoy them nearly as much and you worry you're going to have to take them out in the end.