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.

If I'm not working, I'm not happy. That's it. That's the prerequisite for me for happiness.

Actually, I enjoy the process of writing a big long novel.

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.

Storytelling and elegant style don't always go hand in hand.

I guess that anything we manage to save from history is a miracle.

Everything takes me longer than I expect. It's the sad truth about life