Gogol remembers having to do the same thing when he was younger, when his grandparents died...He remembers, back then, being bored by it, annoyed at having to observe a ritual no one else he knew followed, in honor of people he had seen only a few times in his life...Now, sitting together at the kitchen table at six-thirty every evening, his father's chair empty, this meatless meal is the only thing that seems to make sense.

I've never had Internet access. Actually, I have looked at things on other people's computers as a bystander. A few times in my life I've opened email accounts, twice actually, but it's something I don't want in my life right now.

The first sentence of a book is a handshake, perhaps an embrace.

Fiction is the only way I know a human being can inhabit the mind of another human being.

Pack a pillow and blanket and see as much of the world as you can.You will not regret it.

For that story, I took as my subject a young woman whom I got to know over the course of a couple of visits. I never saw her having any health problems - but I knew she wanted to be married.

It interests me to imagine characters shifting from one situation and one location to another for whatever the circumstances may be.