I think it's what fiction is for: to illuminate that gap between our secret selves and our more visible and apparent ones.

I like writing sentences. It's tactile and exciting. Whereas working at the level of the scene is a more cerebral pleasure.

I've always found too that somewhere in whatever you've just written lies the seed of what you're going to write next.

One of the weird things about L.A. is that there's always a set of negative perceptions that attaches itself to this city.

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.

Our need to identify with representative figures is something that never goes away. We still find those in novels. We find those in television. We find them in movies. We find them all over the place.

My parents were very patient with my pretentious little adolescent snobberies. It took me awhile to accept them.