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.

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.

Jokes are great capsules of information. I think they should never be censored. They often are offensive - and we're offended by different things - but I believe deeply in what Freud wrote of their relationship to the unconscious, which is that jokes come to help us. We laugh so as to dispense with, or to express, some ambivalence or discomfort with the things around us. That's what laughing is: a release.

Now that I am conscious of the world of chronic pain, when I see somebody walking down the street who's having trouble, I feel a sadness for them. I notice.

I'm not just interested in the thoughts I have, but also in others' thoughts, and why not carry those forward? That's why American fiction can be so thin. All these fears, like not seeming to be original - I mean, hell, most stuff isn't. The question is whether you can articulate your thoughts for the moment in which you're living, which is a different time. Say them in a newer way. There are new events, and language changes - sensibilities change. We are writing in and of the time we're in. Oh, it's a weird time.

I am interested in people, and I am interested enough in people that I want to be friends with a lot of people and know about their lives. So I'm not a hermit. I'm also interested in writing about other things. It goes on and on. I sometimes wish that I had a different personality. But then I would write different types of books.

I think many writers really believe that being published is a traumatic experience.