but good friends are nothing to each other if they are not supportive.

When writing a novel, I'm not smart enough to know how to foreshadow something if I don't know what it is.

Adolescence-is it the first time in life we discover that we have something terrible to hide from those who love us?

I am compulsive about writing, I need to do it the way I need sleep and exercise and food and sex; I can go without it for a while, but then I need it.

Being wrong about important things is exhausting.

Life," Garp wrote, "is sadly not structured like a good old-fashioned novel. Instead an end occurs when those who are meant to peter out have petered out. All that is left is memory. But even a nihilist has memory.

I've always been a fan of the 19th century novel, of the novel that is plotted, character-driven, and where the passage of time is almost as central to the novel as a major minor character, the passage of time and its effect on the characters in the story.