Cities produce in me melancholy or a tension I don't need.

How could they say that they truly loved each other? They had simply grown up together, been children together, and the proximity of it, the closeness of it, had produced in them love s illusion. And yet - on the other hand - what was love if it wasn't this instinct she felt.

Even though I may not intend it when I set out to write the book, these places just emerge as major players in what I'm doing, almost as if they are insisting on it.

At one level you're condemned to the voice you have. But within those confines, you have a certain amount of freedom to range among your possible voices.

Well, I think it’s extraordinarily fun to write, and I look forward to it every day, but that doesn’t mean I think it’s easy. There’s a difference between the two. It’s fun in the way all worthwhile things are fun – there’s difficulty attached to it. I think that a writer has to accept a certain amount of frustration. It’s inherent in the task, and you have to simply persevere. It’s part of the definition of the work.

Everybody has a world, and that world is completely hidden until we begin to inquire. As soon as we do, that entire world opens to us and yields itself. And you see how full and complex it is.

Writers shouldn’t underestimate the difficulty of what they’re doing, and they should treat it with great seriousness. You’re doing something that really matters, you’re telling stories that have an impact on other people and on the culture. You should tell the best stories you can possibly tell and put everything you’ve got into it.