You can see a whole book as a series of creating an expectation and then delivering a skew on that expectation so it's not totally satisfied.

Whatever you love, that will be an influence. It just will. So in effect the young writer's job is: go out and find some stuff to love.

I understand what something short should be like. I understand beauty in that form. If I start extending, somehow I kind of lose my bearings.

I think each writer has to seek her most energetic prose style. She has to find a way to write so that nobody can deny it.

I often wonder if there are certain areas of real life that are roped off, with a sign saying, "Art, don't come in here." But that's maybe a deeper question.

I don't think much new ever happens. Most of us spend our days the same way people spent their days in the year 1000: walking around smiling, trying to earn enough to eat, while neurotically doing these little self-proofs in our head about how much better we are than these other slobs, while simultaneously, in another part of our brain, secretly feeling woefully inadequate to these smarter, more beautiful people.

For me, when I'm coming up to a place where I have to make somebody up, it's almost like driving and taking your hands off the wheel.