I could never take the idea of religion very seriously.

People who are disenfranchised politically and people who are poor often don't vote. They often don't elect politicians, so the politicians who are supporting them are really being very charitable, because they're not going to give them billions of dollars in campaign funds.

My belief is that art should not be comforting; for comfort, we have mass entertainment and one another. Art should provoke, disturb, arouse our emotions, expand our sympathies in directions we may not anticipate and may not even wish.

To choose the ideal voice for a character is to give a character an ardent and vivid life, to allow him or her to speak, rather than speaking for them, in an older style of omniscient narration.

There is something thrilling in the mimesis of life's surprising unfolding.

Ideas brush past fleeting and insubstantial as moths. But I let them go, I don't want them. What I want is a voice.

[Emily] Dickinson, our supreme poet of inwardness.