I'm delighted by how Nobody's Fool turned out. It was a rare movie.

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.

I want that which is hilarious and that which is heartbreaking to occupy the same territory in the book because I think they very often occupy the same territory in life, much as we try to separate them.

I suppose all writers worry about the well running dry.

Whatever you're working on, take small bites. The task will not be overwhelming if you can reduce it to its smallest component.

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

I think the darker aspect of my fiction-or anybody's fiction-is by its very nature somehow easier to talk about.