The education of young people is narrowing. They cannot have the scope they used to have. They are being taught in high school by people earnest, still, but maybe less well-prepared than we would want them to be - but not because they are stupid or churlish.

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

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.

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

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

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

Nonfiction, for the most part, is facts, and it's "how I was mistreated. I was mistreated. Were you mistreated? Weren't we all mistreated?"