These novels [Zombie, My Sister, My Love] are so special to me. [I don't expect that they will have nearly the same significance to anyone else.] They represent a kind of fiction I would love to pursue more or less constantly, but dare not.

People might be surprised to know how much I throw away. For every page I publish, I throw 10 pages away.

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

Henry James's later works would have been better had he resisted that curious sort of self-indulgence, dictating to a secretary. The roaming garrulousness of ordinary speech is usually corrected when it's transcribed into written prose.

See, people come into your life for a reason. They might not know it themselves, why. You might not know it. But there's a reason. There has to be

I am not conscious of working especially hard, or of 'working' at all. Writing and teaching have always been, for me, so richly rewarding that I don't think of them as work in the usual sense of the word.

An actress wants to be seen. An actress wants to be loved. By multitudes of people, not just one lone man.