I think that the practice of writing every day was what made me remember that writing doesn't have anything to do with publishing books. It can be totally separate and private - a comforting thought.

In America you make your plans and then they happen.

I can't listen to music when I'm writing. I like music best in a car or on the train.

I've always been a little bit more of a novel reader than a short story reader. I think the first books that made me want to be a writer were novels.

You thought that you were the permanent part of your own experience, the net that held it all together - until you discovered that there were many selves, dissolving into one another so quickly over time that the buildings and the trees and even the pavement turned out to have more substance than you did.

Research for fiction is a funny thing: you go looking for one piece of information, and find something altogether different.

I'm not a big Woody Allen fan, but thought 'Husbands and Wives' was great.