You're only good if you can do bad and decide not to.

If Trump was just a piddly-ass little hotel owner some place, having the kind of character and manners that he has, he would not be worth our notice. But because he's now been based to this huge stage, then his dimensions become immense. He's not a tragic figure because he doesn't have the capacity to be tragic. But the consequences of his life and his self now are immense; they're threatening to the world and to the sanctity of human life.

Some people think that writers are innately solitary and that there's a kind of romance to that solitariness. I tend to think that what writers really want to do is get accepted into things. They want to get accepted into society, into culture, into intelligentsia, into the fun. Writing is their mechanism, their instrument, for doing that.

I grew up in Mississippi being told it was a great place, but not feeling that. When I finally began reading seriously, literature showed me something about where I was from which was worthwhile.

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

I'm not one of those people who as a writer lets my characters tell me what they want to do or call to me or seek me. I go seeking for things, using them as an agent, really.

Only sometimes you can't feel anything about a subject without hypothesizing its extinction.