New York is at once cosmopolitan and parochial, a compendium of sentimental certainties. It is in fact the most sentimental of the world's great cities - in its self-congratulation a kind of San Francisco of the East.

I’ve always thought a novelist only has one character and that is himself or herself.

New York is at once cosmopolitan and parochial, a compendium of sentimental certainties. It is in fact the most sentimental of the world's great cities - in its self-congratulation a kind of San Francisco of the East.

The world is divided up into two kinds of people - those who look at their body waste in the toilet bowl, and those who don't.

Writing is manual labor of the mind: a job, like laying pipe.

I started all over again on page 1, circling the 262 pages like a vulture looking for live flesh to scavenge.

Novels do take charge of the writer, and the writer is basically a kind of sheepdog just trying to keep things on track.