Even though I don't sing any more, singing was my first education in the arts, and it's clear to me that my training as a musician also shaped me as a writer.

I went back to graduate school because I wanted to avoid being a professional, to try to piece together a life that would let me avoid the tenure race and full-time teaching.

The fact remains that books that really put gay people in the center, and especially books that do so in a way that is sexually explicit, tend not to get a great deal of mainstream attention: they don't tend to sell well, and they don't tend to win major awards. This makes the occasional exception, like Alan Hollinghurst, all the more remarkable.

Where the novel makes use of material from my life it does so because it's aesthetically convenient, not because of any allegiance it has to any verifiable facts.

I am a gay writer, absolutely. And in no way does that fact limit the reach or importance of what I write.

A Heart So White is simply one of the best novels I know. I'm also thrilled by Javier Marías sentences, by how elegant they are while also being so permissive in relation to the niceties of grammar and so open to the prospect of surprise. He's a genius.

I think history is only ever invisible when it abets your sense of self, your desires, your ambitions, when it carries your life along in a kind of frictionless way.