I'm happy to report that 'The New Press' is still in business to this day. But not thanks to me. I was a really bad publishing intern.

Supposedly I've got traces of an English accent, though I can't hear it. I must have inherited it from my mother, who's English, and then I think it was exacerbated by the fact that I live with an Australian.

A novel with a bad middle is a bad book. A bad ending is something I've just gotten in the habit of forgiving.

It's a terrible thing for a book, when you feel like you're supposed to like it.

Every year the literary press praises dozens if not hundreds of novels to the skies, asserting explicitly or implicitly that these books will probably not be suffering water damage in the basements of their authors' houses 20 years from now. But historically, anyway, that's not the way the novelistic ecology works.

Being a writer can be isolating. It's good to be among readers and booksellers.

I mean, when you're tired of book reviews, you're tired of life.