I went to the guest room and pretended to write. I hit the space bar again and again and again. My life story was spaces.

I need an office, so I can have a place where I don't write.

She was like a drowning person, flailing, reaching for anything that might save her. Her life was an urgent, desperate struggle to justify her life.

She saw through the shell of me into the center of me

It seems entirely possible to me that horrible things can be going on without us becoming horrible people.

There are two kinds of sculptures. There's the kind that subtracts: Michelangelo starts with a block of marble and chips away. And then there is the kind that adds, building with clay, piling it on. The way I write novels is to keep piling on and piling on and piling on.

I usually write away from home, in coffee shops, on trains, on planes, in friends’ houses. I like places where there’s stuff going on that you can lift your eyes, see something interesting, overhear a conversation.