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

For just one second, look at your life and see how perfect it is. Stop looking for the next secret door that is going to lead you to your real life. Stop waiting. This is it: there's nothing else. It's here, and you'd better decide to enjoy it or you're going to be miserable wherever you go, for the rest of your life, forever.

The real world is horrible.

My ultimate goal is to drive people back to the books, when I think of an adaptation.

How often have I met and disliked writers whose books I love; and conversely, hated the books and then wound up liking the writer? Too often.

Nothing is wrong with you. You're not different. Everybody feels as bad as you do: this is just what writing a novel feels like. To write a novel is to come in contact with raw, primal feelings, hopes and longings and psychic wounds, and try to make a big public word-sculpture out of them, and that is a crazy hard thing to do.

You don’t learn about yourself by being alone, you learn about yourself from other people.