I'm the final clause in a periodic sentence, and that sentence begins a long time ago, in another language, and you to read it from the beginning to get to the end, which is my arrival.

I'm constantly having doubts and moments of depression and then excitement and then back into the slough of despond.

The world, a tired performer, offers us another half-assed season.

Every letter was a love letter. Of course, as love letters went, this one could have been better. It was not very promising, for instance, that Madeleine claimed not to want to see him for the next half-century.

When I wrote The Virgin Suicides, I gave myself very strict rules about the narrative voice: the boys would only be able to report what they had seen or found or what had been told to them.

There's a kind of acting that goes on in my head when I'm writing a character where I put myself in their place.

Everyone struggles against despair, but it always wins in the end. It has to. It's the thing that lets us say goodbye.