I like the fact that I'm living in the world rather than in a university.

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.

When you catch yourself lying to your therapist, you know it's a waste of money.

He insisted on a single trade secret: that you had to survive, find some quiet, and work hard every day.

Bottles of wine aren't like paintings. At some point you have to consume them. The object in life is to die with no bottles of wine in your cellar. To drink your last bottle of wine and go to sleep that night and not wake up.

Your presence here is is only a matter of conducting an experiment in limits, reminding yourself of what you aren’t.

I think it's dangerous to think you know what you're writing. I usually don't know, and usually I just discover it in the course of writing. I envy those writers who can outline a beginning, a middle, and end. Fitzgerald supposedly did it. John Irving does. Bret Easton Ellis does. But for me, the writing itself is the process of discovery. I can't see all that far ahead.