On a more technical level, a story takes a lot of words. And to generate words and phrases and images and so on, that will compel the reader to continue reading - that stand a chance of really grabbing a reader - the writer has to work out of a place of, let's say, familiarity and affection. The matrix of the story has to be made out of stuff the writer really knows about and likes. The writer can't be stretching and (purely) inventing all the time. Well, I can't, anyway.

It was that impossible thing: happiness that does not wilt to reveal the thin shoots of some new desire rising from within it.

If you understand writing as primarily engaging an imaginary reader, well, you've kind of been doing that your whole life. You walk into a room and you're engaging with imaginary strangers because you don't actually know who they are. For me, it was really empowering to say: this is a branch of entertainment and communication and engagement, as opposed to jumping over some perceived literary high bar. That was the buzzkill.

The demographics are changing - and so what? Citizenship is a question of certain agreed-upon values and that is that. Do we believe that? I think at heart we do.

The millions or billions of micro decisions that you're going to make, that's what will determine who you are as a writer, not you deciding in advance.

If you think of a work of fiction as a kind of scale model of the world, then the positive valences - where things turn out better than you thought they would - ought to be in there somewhere, too.

[In the moment of reading writer and reader] are both briefly their best selves, or at least better selves. A flawed human being writes something and 60 years later a reader picks up the book and something in them rises to meet it.