But it had no doubt sprung from true emotion, for all that parents ever wanted, really, was for you to love their child the way they did.

We sometimes drive ourselves crazy with how our books will be "seen," when in fact we already know what they're about, and where our obsessions are. If we can spin those obsessions into fiction, then there's a decent chance they will be "fiction-worthy," as you call it. The idea of the "sweep of ideas" is a complicated one.

The only option for a creative person was constant motion—a lifetime of busy whirligigging in a generally forward direction, until you couldn’t do it any longer.

You had only one chance for a signature in life, but most people left no impression.

In The Interestings I wanted to write about what happens to talent over time. In some people talent blooms, in others it falls away.

People could not get enough of what they had lost, even if they no longer wanted it.

I have never been much of a researcher