When you are writing fiction your task is to reflect the fullest complications of the world

I don't believe in God, but I miss him.

It's easy, after all, not to be a writer. Most people aren't writers, and very little harm comes to them.

I'm one of those writers who started off writing novels and came to writing short stories later, partly because I didn't have the right ideas, partly because I think that short stories are more difficult. I think learning to write short stories also made me attracted toward a paring down of the novel form.

Novels tell us the most truth about life: what it is, how we live it, what it might be for, how we enjoy and value it, and how we lose it.

I am death-fearing. I don't think I'm morbid. That seems to me a fear of death that goes beyond the rational. Whereas it seems to me to be entirely rational to fear death!

When you are writing fiction your task is to reflect the fullest complications of the world