We've been hearing about the death of the novel ever since the day after Don Quixote was published.

You keep thinking that with practice you will eventually get the knack of enjoying superficial encounters, that you will stop looking for the universal solvent, stop grieving. You will learn to compound happiness out of small increments of mindless pleasure.

Most of the people I write about have been ambitious outlanders who have been attracted to New York from other parts of the world.

I envy those writers who outline their novels, who know where they're going. But I find writing is a process of discovery.

Everything becomes symbol and irony when you've been betrayed

There is a type of writer that can happily bury themselves in the country and dig very deep, but I'm not like that.

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.