Knowing and knowing what to do about it were two different things.

What if all everybody needed in the world was to be sure of one friend? What if you were the one, and you refused to say those simple words?

That afternoon I came to understand that one of the deepest purposes of intellectual sophistication is to provide distance between us and our most disturbing personal truths and gnawing fears.

If there's an enduring theme in my work, it's probably the effects of class on American life.

I think a lot of what is going on with kids who get pushed too far and attempt either murder or suicide is that they are trying to deal with their own non-existence for the people who are supposed to care most for them.

I was pretty dead set against ever writing an academic novel. It's always been my view that there are already more than enough academic novels and that most of them aren't any good. Most of them are self-conscious and bitter, the work of people who want to settle grudges.

People often ask me how I make things funny. I don't make things funny.