Sacrificing one's life on the altar of literature is in some ways like sacrificing a goat to some malicious spirit. It's not always a humane or necessary decision.

I was so very interested in literature and so relatively uninterested in the movies when I was a teenager.

Every snotty egotistical teenager thinks they're smarter than the world they crawled out of. It didn't take me so long to grow out of that. I think I was only in my early twenties when I realized I was just relying on received ideas.

I think the publishing industry is dismayingly like the movie business. It grows more corporate by the day.

We go to literature because it shows us some set of humane values. It is showing us how to live.

The novelist is frequently considered to be an impediment.

A Good Soldier is one of my favorite novels, for various reasons. But the class question is a good one, because it's not always easy to empathize with privileged people.