I don't think there's a shortage of material in the world. Or in my head. I just pray for continued good health, because I've got other stories to tell.

You just kind of have faith. If that sounds kind of mystical, it's because I really don't know how it works, but I trust that it does. I try to write the way I read, in order to find out what happens next.

One of the odd things about middle age, he concluded, was the strange decisions a man discovers he's made by not really making them, like allowing friends to drift away through simple neglect.

Movies have to handle time very efficiently. They're about stringing scenes together in the present. Novels aren't necessarily about that.

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

I looked back at some of my earlier published stories with genuine horror and remorse. I got thinking, How many extant copies might there be, who owns them, and do they keep their doors locked?

A lot of my characters in all of my books have a self-destructive urge. They'll do precisely the thing that they know is wrong, take a perverse delight in doing the wrong thing.