Art begins . . . when someone interprets, when someone sees the world through his own eyes. Art happens when what is seen becomes mixed with the inside of the person who is seeing it.

I'm not altogether certain that a fundamentalism of necessity has to argue that it is the only reading of the human experience in order to stay alive.

A writer is a strange instrument of our species, a harp of sorts, fine-tuned to the dark contradictions of life.

I won't talk to you about my family and you won't talk to me about yours. Family talk is either boring or self-pitying. Or it's Gothic, like a Faulkner novel. Who needs to talk about it? It's enough to live it.

I do not have many things that are meaningful to me. Except my doubts and my fears. And my art.

If I had a plot that was all set in advance, why would I want go through the agony of writing the novel? A novel is a kind of exploration and discovery, for me at any rate.

I've begun to realize that you can listen to silence and learn from it. It has a quality and a dimension all its own.