No one I interact with - except maybe for family and strangers at the Russian baths and other weird places I may go to - is just friends or lovers with me: they also know something of my writing and this distorts their take on me.

Oh, God, I don't know what's more difficult, life or the English language.

A lot of writing is a form of seeing - putting down what you see in terms of action and landscape.

I don't laugh that much, but I do like humorous books, and I like to entertain readers that way.

I've always been inspired by Don Quixote as a role model of sorts, of the power of books to sort of make you insane in maybe a beautiful way.

I drink coffee. Without coffee, I probably couldnt write.

Something has happened where you almost never grow up in America. Maybe it's the greater wealth.