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

I subject my sentences and the words to a kind of Grand Inquisition.

I think it's true that unless human beings experience something, they simply don't understand what people are going through.

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.

Any writer knows that what's left out is as essential, if not more so, than what's there. Unlearning works that way.

Wanting to know all kinds of things is perfect for novelists, because novelists are generalists. We're not specialists in anything, except, hopefully, writing.

I think there's much more privileging of the new in art. I think people want to think they privilege the new in writing, but I agree with Virginia Woolf. She wrote a great essay called "Craftsmanship" about how difficult it is to use new words. It's really hard, but you see them coming in because obviously, if you're going to write... I mean, even to write "cell phone" in a novel - it's so boring.