Though I revise constantly as I write, I will usually revise much of the work again after I've reached the ending.

You need so much energy and encouragement to write that if someone says something negative, some of that energy goes.

I don't read for amusement, I read for enlightenment. I do a lot of reviewing, so I have a steady assignment of reading. I'm also a judge for the Anisfield-Wolf Book Awards, which gives awards to literature and nonfiction.

At all crucial moments in our lives we want to speak without knowing what to say.

In a sense, I may not consciously know what I'm doing. I feel that I'm telling a story. I'm a kind of medium by which something is transmitted.

I don't believe in predestination - except for genetic predilections.

Paradox: how do we know what we have failed to see because we have no language to express it, thus we cannot know that we have failed to see it.