I don't begin a novel or a screenplay until I know the ending. And I don't mean only that I have to know what happens. I mean that I have to hear the actual sentences. I have to know what atmosphere the words convey.

They were involved in that awkward procedure of getting to unknow each other.

When Jack Burns needed to hold his mother's hand, his fingers could see in the dark.

No one could have fathomed what a life he'd led, for it was chiefly a life lived in his mind.

What has been violated here is your freedom of choice, and every woman's freedom of choice, too.

It's a no-win argument - that business of what we're born with and what our environment does to us. And it's a boring argument, because it simplifies the mysteries that attend both our birth and our growth.

I had been a student in Vienna, and one of the neat little things I had found out was about that zoo. It was a good debut novel for me to have published. I was 26 or 27 when it was published. I already had a kid and would soon have a second.