I have never started a novel - I mean except the first, when I was starting a novel just to start a novel - I've never written one without rereading Victory. It opens up the possibilities of a novel. It makes it seem worth doing.

I don't have a very clear idea of who the characters are until they start talking.

Becoming a parent is actually terrifying. A lot of people have that feeling about their dogs. And if you're the kind of person who's going to have that feeling about a dog you're definitely going to have that about a child.

The secret point of money and power in America is neither the things that money can buy nor power for power's sake but absolute personal freedom, mobility, privacy.

I came into adult life equipped with an essentially romantic ethic.

Marriage is memory, marriage is time. Marriage is not only time: it is also, parodoxically, the denial of time.

Details are our business as writers. Your heart leaps when you see a detail that can go somewhere