I love insult, it's always honest.

I believe that art is the highest expression of the human spirit. I believe that we yearn to transcend the merely finite and ephemeral; to participate in something mysterious and communal called 'culture' - and that this yearning is as strong in our species as the yearning to reproduce the species.

You need so much energy and encouragement to write that if someone says something negative, some of that energy goes.

I never change, I simply become more myself.

Paradox: how do we know what we have failed to see because we have no language to express it, thus we cannot know that we have failed to see it.

I don't know what marriages are like in general, but there are many things which I don't talk about with my husband. We discuss practical problems, but I wouldn't sit down with him and talk about the distant past. It's somewhat in contrast to other Americans, who feel that they have to confess things, but I'm really not like that.

Only when you have completed a novel, or a story, can you return to the beginning and revise or rewrite.