Thus we try to keep our heroes alive; hence we remember them.

Life is an X-rated soap opera.

I've always preferred writing in longhand. I've always written first drafts in longhand.

If we live long enough, we become caricatures of ourselves.

When I feel like being a director, I write a novel.

Be serious. Life hurts. Reflect what hurts. I don't mean that you can't also be funny, or have fun, but at the end of the day, stories are about what you lose.

I have a process that I seem to always, to some degree, as a writer, adhere to, but I certainly have never imposed the way I write a novel on my students. When I had students, I never said, "You should never start writing a novel until you have the last sentence." I never did that, and I wouldn't do it now, but people now seem so interested in the process [of writing fiction] that I have to constantly make it clear when I describe mine that I'm not being prescriptive. I'm not proselytizing.