I worry that's what people are going to think about me if they kind of go backwards. But if that didn't happen to you, I'll feel better.

More than periods where I don't write anything, I have periods where I just write junk and I know I'm writing junk but I can't stop.

You never want to have to give your child bad news of any kind.

I don't want to make it sound too much like I'm telling people how to read the book A Thousand Pardons, but what Ben Armstead is doing, he's doing more or less on purpose as a very elaborate way of making a sacrifice in his personal life. He needs to start over. This is how he chooses to do it - by blowing up where he is.

One of my favorite pieces of advice about being a writer came from a very formative teacher I had as an undergraduate, named John Hersey. On our last day of class together, which was also John Hersey last day before retirement, he said, "Remember, the world doesn't need any new writers." Which at first didn't seem like great advice, but when you unpacked it, it was really that it's not enough to be confident in what you do; be conscious of bringing something to the world of readers and writers that it hasn't seen before. Something idiosyncratic.

I personally feel I still have so much to learn as a writer; each novel is better than the one before, just because I'm getting better at it.

Novels are a kind of experiment in selfhood, for the reader as well as for the author.