A creative writing workshop will contain students whose ambitions and abilities, whose conceptions of literature itself, are so diverse that what they have in common - the desire to write - could almost be considered meaningless.

For me, a novel is always the result of my attempt to impose myself on raw circumstances. It is a concrete form of lived experience.

It's a pretty brutal process, having a baby.

Divorce also entails the beginning of a supposition that that familial reality might have obstructed one's ability to perceive others.

Parenthood, like death, is an event for which it is nearly impossible to be prepared. It brings you into a new relationship with the fact of your own existence, a relationship in which one may be rendered helpless.

Help is dangerous because it exists outside the human economy: the only payment for help is gratitude.

Christianity has kept itself going for centuries on hope alone, and has perpetrated all manner of naughtiness in the meantime.