... [I] recall thinking that the computer would never advance much further than this. Call me naïve, but I seemed to have underestimated the universal desire to sit in a hard plastic chair and stare at a screen until your eyes cross.

I felt uncomfortable calling myself a writer until I started with 'The New Yorker,' and then I was like, 'Okay, now you can call yourself that.

Sometimes I say to myself, 'Oh, I wish I could win a Tony Award', although I'm not that bothered.

The thought of killing myself had slowed me down to five miles per hour. The thought of killing someone else stopped me completely.

I'm the most important person in the lives of almost everyone I know and a good number of the people I've never even met.

No one reads to hear someone complain about the weather or how poorly their children are behaving. You have to give the readers a reason to turn the page. As a writer you have to invite someone to turn the page. And that is a skill you have to refine. That is why you have to read. You have to read to learn what it is that makes people turn the page.

I don't like travelling if I know I have to write about it.