I'm old-fashioned, a storyteller. I'm not an analyst and I'm not an intellectual.

I have learned that the consequences of our past actions are always interesting; I have learned to view the present with a forward-looking eye.

If watching television doesn't hasten death, it surely manages to make death very inviting; for television so shamelessly sentimentalizes and romanticizes death that it makes the living feel they have missed something - just by staying alive.

There is no straightforward negotiation with a four year old.

Being wrong about important things is exhausting.

When people say that German or any other language is romantic... all they really mean is that they've enjoyed a past in the language

More than a half, maybe as much as two-thirds of my life as a writer is rewriting. I wouldn't say I have a talent that's special. It strikes me that I have an unusual kind of stamina.