Loneliness is like starvation: you don't realize how hungry you are until you begin to eat.

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.

Reading is the sole means by which we slip, involuntarily, often helplessly, into another's skin, another's voice, another's soul.

Writing allows for fictitious voices - the voices of persons unlike myself - that might otherwise be muted.

The suicide does not play the game, does not observe the rules. He leaves the party too soon, and leaves the other guests painfully uncomfortable.

Before you can write a novel you have to have a number of ideas that come together. One idea is not enough.

One writes to memorialize, and to bring to life again that which has been lost.