You can't sort of write the novel as if you're taking dictation from heaven.

Mere fact has no chance of being formally perfect. It will get in the way, it will be all elbows.

Often it doesn't occur to you what kind of novel you're writing until quite late on.

The Democratic Party represents the American brain, and the Republicans represent not the American heart, or soul, but the American gut. The argument between brain and bowel, everywhere else in the Free World, has been decided long ago in favor of brain. But Americans still - it still divides the nation, this question, here in America.

One of the unseen benefits of having children is that they deliver you from your own selfishness. There's no going back.

It sounds schmaltzy to say, but fiction is much more to do with love than people admit or acknowledge. The novelist has to not only love his characters - which you do, without even thinking about it, just as you love your children. But also to love the reader, and that's what I mean by the pleasure principle.

It's hard to make progress with grief.