What you call your personality, you know? --it's not like actual bones, or teeth, something solid. It's more like a flame. A flame can be upright, and a flame can flicker in the wind, a flame can be extinguished so there's no sign of it, like it had never been.

America is a very religious nation. Not a mono-religious nation because there are many different strands of belief, but there's something about this nation that inspires people, or perhaps draws people, who are strongly idealistic.

Without craft, art remains private. Without art, craft is merely hackwork.

For memory is a moral action, a choice. You can choose to remember. You can choose not.

I was writing novels in high school and apprenticed myself in a way both to Faulkner and to Hemingway.

A diverse and lively collection, the highest art of the interview.

I don't know what marriages are like in general, but there are many things which I don't talk about with my husband. We discuss practical problems, but I wouldn't sit down with him and talk about the distant past. It's somewhat in contrast to other Americans, who feel that they have to confess things, but I'm really not like that.