But it's for every writer to decide his own pace, and the pace varies with the writer and the work

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.

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.

Stay away from the ones you love too much. Those are the ones who will kill you.

Not quite what one expected, but once it happened one realized it couldn't be any other way.

I believe, in a funny way, the job of the novelist is to be out there on the fringes and speaking for an experience that has not really been spoken for.

Sometimes you can do all the right things and not succeed. And that's a hard lesson of reality.