I keep a quotes journal - of every sentence that I've wanted to remember from my reading of the past 30 years.

What I really like to learn how to do is to build sentences that are equal to mental states.

Time passes, as the novelist says. The single most useful trick of fiction for our repair and refreshment: the defeat of time. A century of family saga and a ride up an escalator can take the same number of pages. Fiction sets any conversion rate, then changes it in a syllable. The narrator’s mother carries her child up the stairs and the reader follows, for days. But World War I passes in a paragraph. I needed 125 pages to get from Labor Day to Christmas vacation. In six more words, here’s spring.

I used to work for 12 or 14 hours at a time but the digital age has made such happy immersions almost impossible.

I like to travel and connect.

In 25 years of writing novels, I've never had anything that felt like writer's block.

Only white men have the luxury of ignoring race.