I've never been able to sleep very much, even when I was a kid. I used to hate being forced to lay in bed in the darkness, and just shifting in bed and staring at the shadows.

If no one knows you, then you are no one.

One of the things I rarely do is write about sex.

It had occurred to him that if the undead don't realize that they are dead, he might easily be one of them himself.

Julie Orringer is the real thing, a breathtaking chronicler of the secrets and cruelties underneath the surface of middle-class American life. These are terrific stories-wise, compassionate and haunting.

My main reader was my wife Sheila, and I haven't written a lot since she died.

I read a lot, but at the same time I'm not a particularly good or diligent or discriminating reader. I go through maybe close to a thousand or more books a year, but a lot of times I'll only read bits and pieces of any one individual text.