If some people read my fiction and see it as fundamentally about philosophical ideas, what it probably means is that these are pieces where the characters are not as alive and interesting as I meant them to be.

She took a sort of abject pride in her mecilessness toward herself.

TV's "real" agenda is to be "liked," because if you like what you're seeing, you'll stay tuned. TV is completely unabashed about this; it's its sole raison.

I was never the sort of child who believed in "monsters under the bed" or vampires, or who needed a night-light in his bedroom; on the contrary, my father...once laughingly told my mother that he thought I might suffer from a type of benign psychosis called "antiparanoia," in which I seemed to believe that I was the object of an intricate universal conspiracy to make me so happy I could hardly stand it.

If Realism called it like it saw it, Metafiction simply called it as it saw itself seeing itself see it.

Most of the writers I know are weird hybrids. There's a strong streak of egomania coupled with extreme shyness. Writing's kind of like exhibitionism in private. And there's also a strange loneliness, and a desire to have some kind of conversation with people, but not a real great ability to do it in person.

If you can think of times in your life that you’ve treated people with extraordinary decency and love, and pure uninterested concern, just because they were valuable as human beings. The ability to do that with ourselves. To treat ourselves the way we would treat a really good, precious friend. Or a tiny child of ours that we absolutely loved more than life itself. And I think it’s probably possible to achieve that. I think part of the job we’re here for is to learn how to do it