I do have complicated feelings about Hollywood, but I also have tremendously affectionate ones.

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

I don't want to say that having power is overrated, but powerlessness can give rise to a different kind of authority, and that's the kind of authority that writes books.

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

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

I don't feel like I'm self-conscious about what's next. I don't care. I know what it's like to be ignored, and I know what it's like not to be.

Everybody says, TV is great, the writer has so much power. I'm still trying to convince myself that's true. When do the writers ever have power? Ever? They don't. Even in the book industry.