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

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.

I hesitate to say yes - I had writer's block, because I know there are people who've had really serious cases of it, and I've never been paralyzed like that, but I definitely get blocked sometimes. 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.

A Thousand Pardons began at the beginning. I wanted it to be one continuous, almost breathless kind of story. In order to do that, it's really hard not to begin at the beginning. There's such a chain of consequence to everything that happens to main characters - it's very hard to break it apart and still be able to hold the plot in your head.

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

You should not really entertaining anyone else, but trying to be yourself, because there are already more good books than you or I could ever read in our lifetime.

Those who know New York City primarily through tourism or mass culture may think of us natives as possessing certain shared characteristics, not all of them flattering. But the true, volatile charisma of New York lies in how balkanised it is.