I have always found the times when another person recognizes you to be strangely sad; I suspect the pathos of these moments is their rareness, the way they contrast with most daily encounters. That reminder that it can be different, that you need not go through your life unknown but that you probably still will--that is the part that's almost unbearable.

Personally, I have never wished I were a male novelist.

I just like to inhabit a character really deeply.

She really does like him, she likes lying next to him, she wants to be around him; when you get down to it, can you say that about many people?

In some ways I think it would be very dignified if I went away for twenty years and then wrote my fourth book.

There are so many people who are so much better qualified to write about politics than I am.

If I'm at somebody's house and they have magazines on the table and people are chatting, I feel almost a physical urge to start reading the magazines instead of talking to people.