These days any self-respecting exhibition of nude photos has to have pornographically explicit images to prove that they are works of art.

For so long I didn't have any kind of readership at all - I'd get published, but not read - the idea of writing for an audience is so anathema to me, it's never bothered me.

The ideal is to feel at home anywhere, everywhere.

Have regrets. They are fuel. On the page they flare into desire.

The thing that strikes me, from looking at the names so far in the Donald Trump's Cabinet on the foreign policy side, is the one thing that unites them - and that's General James Mattis at the Pentagon, Mike Pompeo at the CIA, even Mitt Romney to become secretary of state - they're all very, very hawkish on Iran.

What I'm really interested in, as a reader and as a writer, is the idea of the nonfiction book that is not defined by its content, by its "about"-ness. Where you read it irrespective of whether you're interested in the subject.

When you are lonely, writing can keep you company. It is also a form of self-compensation, a way of making up for things—as opposed to making things up—that did not quite happen.