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

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

Good fiction necessarily encompasses our limited understandings of one another, and of ourselves.

I heard a story the other night about an editor who visited the Iowa Workshop and, when asked what sorts of books she published, replied, "Classic books." One of the students asked her, "You mean like Kafka?" Apparently she said, "Oh, I don't think I would publish Kafka."

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

I think writers can gain a lot of vitality from being misread.

I'm going to write what I feel like writing, which is a great place to be. But it can be hard to get there. It's so easy to get stricken with one kind of self-consciousness or another.