A beautiful word in the middle of a sentence can sometimes reduce me to tears in an interview, and when I'm reading, too. I've sometimes wondered whether I'm at the point of tears all the time because I use my eyes so much that they're strained and on the verge of tears anyway.

A bleak, black book, it engenders awe and despair. I have read it in its entirety 4 1/2 times, each time finding its resonance and beauty so great as to demand another reading. As I read, I found myself devastated by the thoroughness of the book's annihilating sensibility and revived by the beauty of its language, the complexity of its design, the melancholy, horror and stoic sympathy in its rendering of what we used to call the human condition.

People tell me I have the best job in the world, which is true, but I also work with some of the best people in the world.

She taught you how to be a person who refuses anything but the meaningful.

I'm very against interviewers who do not have time to read the work, who accept jobs knowing that they don't have time to do the preparation.

I thought I was going to be a math major. My parents were both accountants and wanted me to major in business. Math was our compromise.

A beautiful word in the middle of a sentence can sometimes reduce me to tears in an interview, and when I'm reading, too. I've sometimes wondered whether I'm at the point of tears all the time because I use my eyes so much that they're strained and on the verge of tears anyway.