A creative writing program is only as good as its teachers, and I was fortunate in having two great writers as mentors.

I'm a romantic; you have to be to marry four times.

I think, when I'm writing, I have a more clinical view than I do when I'm reading. I like pretending to be God and basically determining the fate of my characters. But as a reader, I'm a sucker. I'm very sentimental. I get upset when people that I like die. And yet I have killed off characters in my books quite heartlessly, and sometimes found that readers were very upset by it.

Anybody who becomes a movie star becomes successful at projecting a certain image to the public.

If it's red, French, costs too much, and tastes like the water that's left in the vase after the flowers have died and rotted, it's probably Burgundy.

My former wife is a very eccentric woman, which is why I still love her.

Everything becomes symbol and irony when you've been betrayed