To be a person who sees a political ad on television and takes the statements in it as fact, how can you exist in this world? How is it you're not robbed daily by charlatans who knock at your door?

I like it when characters are some combination of appealing and maybe flawed or self-interested. I think in terms of scenes, and what I want a scene to achieve, and I think that the psychological realism arises from that.

I just write the books that I think I would want to read.

I feel like a lot of life is distasteful and embarrassing. And you just push through it. You fix what you can, and you let time pass.

I think in general, novels by men tend to be taken more seriously than novels by women.

It's different to read a book for pleasure than to read it analytically. In the past, I'd read Pride and Prejudice for pleasure. This time, I was really looking at the structure, the order of events, how the characters interact with each other and how the book is paced.

After I’d told her – the mall, the taxi, Cross stroking my hair – she said, ‘Did he kiss you?’ ‘John and Martin totally would have seen that,’ I said, and as I felt myself implying the circumstances had prevented our kissing, I thought maybe this was why you told stories to other people – for how their possibilities enlarged in the retelling.