The art of living your life has a lot to do with getting over loss. The less the past haunts you, the better.

I know you can dream your way through an otherwise fine life, and never wake up, which is what I almost did.

A reader is entitled to believe what he or she believes is consonant with the facts of the book. It is not unusual that readers take away something that is spiritually at variance from what I myself experienced. That's not to say readers make up the book they want. We all have to agree on the facts. But readers bring their histories and all sets of longings. A book will pluck the strings of those longings differently among different readers.

The ways in which things are superficially similar but also distinct is interesting to me.

At the exact moment any decision seems to be being made, it's usually long after the real decision was actually made--like light we see emitted from stars.

I'm trying to cause people to be interested in the particulars of their lives because I think that's one thing literature can do for us. It can say to us: pay attention. Pay closer attention. Pay stricter attention to what you say to your son.

Marry somebody you love and who thinks you being a writer's a good idea.