If you’re reading to find friends, you’re in deep trouble.

Above all, in my anger, I was sad. Isn't that always the way, that at the heart of the fire is a frozen kernel of sorrow that the fire is trying -- valiantly, fruitlessly -- to eradicate.

If you’re reading to find friends, you’re in deep trouble. We read to find life, in all its possibilities. The relevant question isn’t ‘Is this a potential friend for me?’ but ‘Is this character alive?'

I've always felt that if a project seems easy, or even attainable, why pursue it? I'll always find the hardest path.

Geniuses have the shortest biographies.

I always say to my students, if you can do anything other than writing and be happy, then you should.

An abiding preoccupation for me is how much of our lives are invisible and unknown by other people like the Chekhov story The Lady With the Little Dog.