I woke up one day and thought: I want to write a book about the history of my body. I could justify talking about my mother because it was in her body that my body began.

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.

The biggest book for me, when I was fifteen, was Crime and Punishment, which I read in a kind of fever. When I put it down, I thought, if this is what novels are then I want to be a novelist.

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

I've been asked several times over the years to become president, and I've always said no, because I didn't want to give up all the time from my work. The position won't be open for another year, but if they still want me then, I'll do it; I'll speak out as often as I can from that platform.

I don't want to use quotation marks anymore, I've gone back and forth with them. In Ghosts, I didn't use them, for instance, all the way back in the early eighties.

I like the sound a typewriter makes.