Like most-maybe all- writers, I learned to write by writing and, by example, by reading books.

I think poets are much more dramatic, more theatrical than fiction writers.

'One Hundred Years of Solitude' convinced me to drop out of Harvard graduate school. The novel reminded me of everything my Ph.D. program was trying to make me forget. Thank you, Gabriel Garcia Marquez.

I wrote about four novels before I wrote a word of journalism.

The mystery of death, the riddle of how you could speak to someone and see them every day and then never again, was so impossible to fathom that of course we kept trying to figure it out, even when we were unconscious.

I remember, when I was a little kid, I was good at sports, and I could jump off the high board. And then puberty hit, and suddenly I was looking to boys for direction. I remember that as a great loss.

When we humans speak, we are not merely communicating information but attempting to make an impression and achieve a goal.