Every act of loving affirms the goodness of the lover just because he is capable of loving and being loved.

Every person in therapy has a love disorder.

I sat around the kitchen every Sunday afternoon listening to my mother and aunts talk about the people in the neighborhood. Gossip - I loved it. And that turns out to be the writer's job: to attend to the gossip and spread it as far as you can.

I write with a fountain pen. And then revise word by word and line by line so that the first draft of a scene is usually the tenth or so draft.

The facts, however, are unimportant in fiction. It's not the events of my life that I mine, but the emotional experiences I've had.

The regional tags are often pejorative and dismissive. Don't think of place-bound stories, in other words, but of stories with a strong sense of place.

I was reading for understanding. I wanted to do to a reader what Salinger did for me.