I don't think the world is particularly responsive to - our world, the culture we are in, to art right now.

When I am writing a novel I try not to read great prose stylists into which I will fall.

I enjoy going to campuses and reading and doing a class or teaching and then running away and not having to grade papers.

I don't think I want to write a third book. But the more people talk to me about it, the more I think maybe I do.

What to know about pain is how little we do to deserve it, how simple it is to give, how hard to lose.

I know important literary writers who can't get published.

The importance to the world of what we scribblers write is in doubt, I would think.