I'm a natural novelist. I'm interested in the person and the group, and how they mesh. And one of the ways I don't want them to mesh is for the person to be subsumed into the group.

There is something I have noticed about desire, that it opens the eyes and strikes them blind at the same time.

The novel as a form is usually seen to be moral if its readers consider freedom, individuality, democracy, privacy, social connection, tolerance and hope to be morally good, but it is not considered moral if the highest values of a society are adherence to rules and traditional mores, the maintenance of hierarchical relationships, and absolute ideas of right and wrong. Any society based on the latter will find novels inherently immoral and subversive.

The essence of charity ... was not deciding what others needed and giving it to them, but giving them what they wanted.

There are hundreds of Frank Lloyd Wright buildings around the United States and in other countries, too. Wright lived into his 90s, and one of his most famous buildings, the Guggenheim Museum in New York, was completed just before his death. Wright buildings look like Wright buildings - that is their paradox.

Take naps. Often new ideas come together when you are half asleep, but you have to train yourself to remember them.

The main thing about the novel that is totally fascinating: It's not possessed by the writer; it's possessed by the reader.