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

And I’m drawn to failure. I often write about it, and I’m sympathetic with it, I think, because I feel I’m contending with it constantly in my own life.

I feel a terrible loss when I (eventually must) complete a work of fiction.

I learned you don't discover the evidence of any cause in its result.

I have forced myself to begin writing when I've been utterly exhausted, when I've felt my soul as thin as a playing card…and somehow the activity of writing changes everything.

Of the widow's countless death-duties there is really just one that matters: on the first anniversary of her husband's death the widow should think I kept myself alive.

To be knocked out doesn't mean what it seems. A boxer does not have to get up.