Hemingway said the only way to write about a place is to leave it.

To deny that there was this dark side of life would be like pretending that the cold of winter was somehow only a temporary illusion, a way station on the way to the higher "reality" of long, warm, pleasant summers. But summer, it turned out, was no more real than the snow that melted in wintertime.

I was aware that there is an expectation that writers inevitably falter at this stage, that they fail to live up to the promise of their first successful book, that the next book never pleases the way the prior one did. It simply increased my sense of being challenged.

I'm not an urban person.

The strange thing was, he wanted to like everyone. He just couldn't find a way to do it.

I think of myself as a really happy person.

What some people interpret as brooding melancholy is serenity. I don't feel required to grasp all the time.