He wished he could arrange a maiming as a kind of moral lesson

There was no manifestation of contemporary culture that did not indicate to my grandmother how steadfast was the nation's decline, how merciless our mental and moral deterioration, how swiftly all-embracing our final decadence. I never saw her read a book again; but she referred to books often - as if they were shrines and cathedrals of learning that television had plundered and then abandoned.

I believe a novel should be as complicated and involved as you're capable of making it.

Because abortions are illegal, women who need and want them have no choice in the matter, and you-because you know how to perform them-have no choice, either

The characters in my novels, from the very first one, are always on some quixotic effort of attempting to control something that is uncontrollable - some element of the world that is essentially random and out of control.

You can give yourself a headache trying to decipher the tattoos on a naked man who’s leaping up and down on a bed.

We will often do anything to pretend that nothing is on our minds.