Nonfiction gives you subjects. Writing fiction I can have more fun, but I have to invent my subject.

In a practical sense, pain kept me from sitting down as much, so that sometimes I would have to stand to write. Not that I would necessarily have gotten anywhere anyway. But it definitely set me back to be in so much pain.

You have to create the space for the possibility of people speaking as they do. If writing is supposed to lead us in any way or educate or suggest other ways of being, it can't do so by simply reflecting what's considered to be realistic.

I learned I could be miserable anywhere in the world. I learned I really was an American.

I still do believe that form and content are very much related. I think throwing away some of the rule books on that is a good thing.

I think I'm too indoctrinated. I'm going to use everything I can, and I think if I used an advertisement in that one, it would be yet another way to connect the current day with Wharton. Wharton has been perceived sometimes as being too upper class; Wharton was an extraordinary social thinker. As relevant today as anyone, so she uses some language that isn't current, but to me, I'm so happy about that because I get so bored with the 100 words that people mostly use.

It's easy, at this point in my life, very easy to write a beautiful sentence that's meaningless. A lot of writers do that. But I don't want it to be meaningless. I want it to actually say what I want it to say, and so I'm thinking about it again and again and again.