Worse, I have to admit to feeling the jealousy of one crab for another that has managed to climb out of the barrel.

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

I don't think America has ever had a center the way London is the center of England or Dublin is the center of Ireland.

I have to have a character worth caring about. I tend not to start writing books about people I don't have a lot of sympathy for because I'm just going to be with them too long.

I told him the truth, that I loved him and didn't regret anything about our lives together. But do we ever 'tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help me God' as my father used to say, to those we love? Or even to ourselves? Don't even the best and most fortunate of lives hint at other possibilities, at a different kind of sweetness and, yes, bitterness too? Isn't this why we can't help feeling cheated, even when we know we haven't been?

I suppose all writers worry about the well running dry.

You can't possibly judge your ability to control something until you've experienced the extremes of its capabilities. Do you understand?