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.

The literary world is more time-traveling than the art world, and novelty is much more important in art than it is in writing.

Writing and rewriting are the same thing to me. I don't believe what Allen Ginsberg said that "first thought, then - " I just don't believe that.

I would never want to write a character who was not thoroughly herself or himself. She's a very specific creature in my mind, and she has her thoughts, which range from skin to American history, philosophy, and the arts.

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'm very interested in animal behavior, and the relationship of human beings to other animal behavior.

Desire is a word I'm tired of. I've been living with that word for years. Yes, of course, we're all desiring machines. I have sometimes wondered what people would want, if there were no advertising. And death, what other subject is there? It's the subject. It's our subject. It's the great human dilemma, that we die and know we will.