I'm getting a wider circle of fans now. More women, more middle class people.

My guys are morally weak, and they reach toward a tenuous knowledge of self-sacrifice, and sometimes it's too late. I find that moving. It's not a life I'd want to live. But, then, I'm not completely my books.

You try to learn who you are. You work hard. You've either got it or you don't when it comes to writing books. And you tend to only get these things if you want them, and want them to the exclusion of everything else.

It's all sex for me. Politics is sex. Race is sex. It's the novel. It's the novel!

I don't think I will write anything that could be even remotely considered a genre novel from this point on. I think I've graduated.

I like to be alone so I can write. But focus can hurt you. I don't want to be some stress casualty in early middle age.

I was in L.A. in '08. It was a cold Saturday night. I had spread my phone number out to a score of women and was just indulging this sweet, sad, elegiac, bale loneliness - don't tell me you haven't been there.