One thing that helps is to give myself permission to write badly. I tell myself that I'm going to do my five or 10 pages no matter what, and that I can always tear them up the following morning if I want. I'll have lost nothing-writing and tearing up five pages would leave me no further behind than if I took the day off.

If you build a better mousetrap, Nature will build a better mouse.

Stories are like assholes. Everybody's got one and most of 'em stink.

As my late mother famously observed, the one thing to be said for growing old is that every year there are a few more things I don’t have to give a rat’s ass about.

If you want to write fiction, the best thing you can do is take two aspirins, lie down in a dark room, and wait for the feeling to pass.

I never know what I'm going to write next, and when I think I do I usually turn out to be mistaken.

I've always essentially been a New Yorker.