To understand the world at all, sometimes you could only focus on a tiny bit of it, look very hard at what was close to hand and make it stand in for the whole.

There's an expectation these days that novels - like any other consumer product - should be made on a production line, with one dropping from the conveyor belt every couple of years.

Anything is grand if it's done on a large enough scale.

Clearly something had gone wrong, badly, only I wasn't quite sure what—apart from knowing that I was responsible somehow, in the generalized miasma of shame and unworthiness and being-a-burden that never quite left me.

As much fun as it is to read a book, writing a book is one level deeper than that.

Beauty is rarely soft or consolatory. Quite the contrary. Genuine beauty is always quite alarming.

Love doesn't conquer everything. And whoever thinks it does is a fool.