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.

In the end, each life is no more than the sum of contingent facts, a chronicle of chance intersections, of flukes, of random events that divulge nothing but their own lack of purpose.

It's beyond the grasp of anyone's memory to recall conversations in kind of [memoir] detail. So it's fake. It's all made up.

Money is the driving force of Hand to Mouth, the lack of money, and all those true stories about strange things in The Red Notebook, coincidences and unlikely events, surprise, the unexpected.

I've written books that have taken me fifteen years, from first sentence to last, and some that only take three or four months.

No book includes the entire world. It's limited. And so it doesn't seem like an aesthetic compromise to have to do that. There's so much other material to write about.

Cities - I'm attracted to them, and I have a special attachment to New York...it's my place.