It's hard for me to show work while I'm writing, because other people's comments will influence what happens.

I love the tradition of Dickens, where even the most minor walk-on characters are twitching and particular and alive.

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

Does such a thing as 'the fatal flaw,' that showy dark crack running down the middle of a life, exist outside literature? I used to think it didn't. Now I think it does. And I think that mine is this: a morbid longing for the picturesque at all costs.

It happened in New York, April 10th, nineteen years ago. Even my hand balks at the date. I had to push to write it down, just to keep the pen moving on the paper. It used to be a perfectly ordinary day, but now it sticks up on the calendar like a rusty nail.

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.

After all, the appeal to stop being yourself, even for a little while, is very great