There have been times when I reread - or at least leafed through - something because I'd sent a copy to a friend, and what usually happened was that I noticed dozens and dozens of clumsy phrases I wished I could rewrite.

An average working day begins at 8 or 9 am, includes an hour for lunch, and ends at 5 or 6 pm.

Each new book is a tremendous challenge.

These days, there are a great many books about childhood trauma and its effects, but at the time all the experts agreed that one should forget about it as quickly as possible and pick up where you left off.

God, in the orthodox view, causes famine, plague, and flood. Was God evil? Evil is a convenient fiction.

I always think about the books I'm doing in pretty much the same way. I'm simply trying to write that particular novel as well as that particular novel can be written. I want to listen to what it is telling me, trying to figure out what it wants to do as much as what I want to do with it. There's a negotiation that's constant and ongoing between me and the material I'm working with, because I'm trying to listen to it.

Intellectual labor is a common technique for the avoidance of thinking.