When my brother called to inform me, on the morning of May 22, 2003, that our mother Caroline Oates had died suddenly of a stroke, it was a shock from which, in a way, I have yet to recover.

The heavenly light you admire is fossil-light, it's the unfathomably distant past you gaze into, stars long extinct

Productivity is a relative matter. And it's really insignificant: What is ultimately important is a writer's strongest books.

Cherie, keep walking. Shut your eyes. We are headed for the bridge. We are going to cross it.

In no other sport is the connection between performer and observer so intimate, so frequently painful, so unresolved

Boxing is a celebration of the lost religion of masculinity all the more trenchant for its being lost.

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