My characters never die screaming in rage. They attempt to pull themselves back together and go on. And that's basically a conservative view of life.

Some people do wait their whole lives for something, and it's only when that thing arrives that they find out that they've been waiting rather than living.

Love is a general emotion. Marriage is exactingly specific.

I was depressed, but that was a side issue. This was more like closing up shop, or, say, having a big garage sale, where you look at everything you've bought in your life, and you remember how much it meant to you, and now you just tag it for a quarter and watch 'em carry it off, and you don't care. That's more like how it was.

Horse racing is really much more intimidating than anything having to do with literature. When I had horses at the racetrack, I would wake up in terror in a way that I would never wake up while working on a novel.

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

When a novel has 200,000 words, then it is possible for the reader to experience 200,000 delights, and to turn back to the first page of the book and experience them all over again, perhaps more intensely.