I write so much because my cat sits on my lap. She purrs so I don't want to get up. She's so much more calming than my husband.

The greatest realities are physical and economic, all the subtleties of life come afterward.

I've never given up. I've always kept going. I don't feel that I could afford to give up. That would be the beginning of the end.

I think all art comes out of conflict. When I write I am always looking for the dramatic kernel of an event, the junctures of people's lives when they go in one direction, not another.

To write a novel is to embark on a quest that is very romantic. People have visions, and the next step is to execute them. That's a very romantic project. Like Edvard Munch's strange dreamlike canvases where people are stylized, like 'The Scream.' Munch must have had that vision in a dream, he never saw it.

The use of language is all we have to pit against death and silence.

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