I don't think anybody says to Coetzee or Dostoyevsky or Kafka, "Your characters aren't likeable." It's not about your character winning a popularity contest. That's not the writer's job.

I think it's very hard to reconcile oneself to the notion that it may not matter what you think if you still want to write.

I also think that the issue of doubt and uncertainty is always a good thing and I question why I believe what I believe. I see things changing all around me and I don't feel devoted to a form. If I'm devoted to anything, I'm devoted to the attempt - the "trying" to do something.

I unlearned the model of being an editor like Ezra Pound with T.S. Eliot, the unconscious belief that America was the center of the world, and that honesty meant saying what I thought and always being direct.

For me, the experience of not living in America was recognizing that I was American. You don't think about yourself being so culturally encoded, so nationally stamped; you don't discover that when you're a tourist for a month. You see how you reflect the place you're from. When I came back from living in Europe, I was very struck by how I didn't see America as the center of the world in the same way. It's very easy to slip back because America is so powerful. But any place you live is the center of the world.

People in the upper classes can just as easily be indifferent to their own body, or treat themselves as badly, as people who don't have the money. There are always differences among differences.

It's not the writer who determines how good she is anyway. Writers don't determine that. It's readers who determine that.