Ralph Kramden, as played by Jackie Gleason, was this big bumbling New York City bus driver who was kind of mean and crass and a little bit egotistical. But underneath it all, he was a big heart looking for a place to land I think.

That seems to be the definition of 'novel' for me: a story that hasn't yet discovered a way to be brief.

Don't be afraid to be confused. Try to remain permanently confused. Anything is possible. Stay open, forever, so open it hurts, and then open up some more, until the day you die, world without end, amen.

Sometimes I think fiction exists to model the way God might think of us, if God had the time and inclination to do so.

I like [Barak] Obama. I like him. So how far does rationality help to persuade anybody? You know, I'm not so sure.

I sometimes think that I can't do the bigger thing that [Zadie Smith] do so beautifully, as in Swing Time, with so much world in it and so much rapturous paint thrown around. I don't think it would be possible to write a book on that scale with as much OCD as I have.

I keep thinking of Robert Stone making the distinction between the word sublime and the word beautiful. He described being in a battle as sublime. Because even though people were dying, it was such a huge sensory experience that it became sublime.