I project myself so deeply into the characters in novels that I'm not thinking about my own life.

Just think it, and chances are it will happen.

The book that convinced me I wanted to be a writer was 'Crime and Punishment'. I put the thing down after reading it in a fever over two or three days... I said, 'If this is what a book can be, then that is what I want to do.'

It's a mind going over things, revisiting things, maybe trying to refine the original perception. You have to keep going a thing over in order to make sense off it.

I don't like pictures in books. I feel that the pictures diminish the words, and the words diminish the pictures, and it doesn't work.

I know that what's happened in the election has changed American reality, and I understand that I have to change with it. I have to rethink how I live my life. I'm not a political essayist; I don't see that I would have any value cranking out articles for newspapers or magazines, because lots of people are doing that already.

I don't even own a computer. I write by hand then I type it up on an old manual typewriter. But I cross out a lot - I'm not writing in stone tablets, it's just ink on paper. I don't feel comfortable without a pen or a pencil in my hand. I can't think with my fingers on the keyboard. Words are generated for me by gripping the pen, and pressing the point on the paper.