I'm not a boy-writer, I've never been. I wanted to be a boy-writer when I was young, and I think that held me back. I wanted to be very clever, and funny, but I'm not very clever and not terribly funny. I've finally accepted my limits, and I do what I can do.

Stories only happen to those who are able to tell them.

I would say that Edgar Allan Poe, [Georges] Perec, Thomas Pynchon, and [Jorge Luis] Borges are all boy-writers. These are writers who take... a kind of demonic joy in writing.

I never experiment with anything in my books. Experimentation means you don't know what you're doing.

I believe that every artist, in one way or another, is a wounded person. It's not natural to make art.

Stories surge up out of nowhere, and if they feel compelling, you follow them. You let them unfold inside you and see where they are going to lead.

As my friend George Oppen once said to me about getting old: what a strange thing to happen to a little boy.