Reading is the sole means by which we slip, involuntarily, often helplessly, into another's skin, another's voice, another's soul.

Whoever was stupid was beneath worry or thought; you did not have to figure them out. This eliminated hundreds of people. In this life you had time only for a certain amount of thinking, and there was no need to waste any of it on people who were not threatening.

'The Accursed' is very much a novel about social injustice as the consequence of the terrible, tragic division of classes - the exploitation not only of poor and immigrant workers but of their young children in factories and mills - and as the consequence of race hatred in the aftermath of the Civil War and the freeing of the slaves.

I work very slowly. It's like building a ladder, where you're building your own ladder rung by rung, and you're climbing the ladder. It's not the best way to build a ladder, but I don't know any other way.

Only in love is there trust - even the possibility of trust.

No, the thing is, we all love storytelling, and as a writer you get to tell stories all the time.

I could never take the idea of religion very seriously.