You've got to get obsessed and stay obsessed.

It is exhausting to be seventeen and not know who you are.

You don't want to be ungenerous toward people who give you prizes, but it is never the social or political message that interests me in a novel. I begin with an interest in a relationship, a situation, a character.

The main character and the most important character are not always the same person - you have to know the difference.

It is hard work and great art to make life not so serious.

…there is no nakedness that compares to being naked in front of someone for the first time.

Whatever I write, no matter how gray or dark the subject matter, it's still going to be a comic novel.