On the elusive gift of blending austerity of craft with elasticity of allure.

Obviously, there is pleasure in the execution of any sort of art, and using language, as Nabokov felt also, is an exquisite process.

My role models were childless: Virginia Woolf, Jane Austen, George Eliot, the Brontes.

I wrote a novel called "Blonde," which is about Norma Jean Baker, who becomes Marilyn Monroe, which I called a fictitious biography. That uses the material as if it were myth - that Marilyn Monroe is like this mythical figure in our culture.

The domestic lives we live - which may be accidental, or not entirely of our making - help to make possible our writing lives; our imaginations are freed, or stimulated, by the very prospect of companionship, quiet, a predictable and consoling routine.

The denial of language is a suicidal one and we pay for it with our own lives.

I work very slowly. It's like building a ladder, where you're building your own ladder rung by rung, and you're climbing the ladder. It's not the best way to build a ladder, but I don't know any other way.