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.

By ignoring a lot of American culture you can write more interesting stories. Unfortunately, if you were writing about America as it is, you'd be writing about a lot of people sitting in front of television sets.

When authors who write literary fiction begin to write screenplays, everybody assumes that's the end. Here's another who's never going to write well again.

I think it would be harder for me not to write comedy because the comic view of things is the one that comes most naturally to me.

And there comes a time in your life when you realize that if you don't take the opportunity to be happy, you may never get another chance again.

I just have this feeling that if it weren't for the Gloversville Free Library that I probably would not be a writer.

A couple years ago, the novelist Russell Banks told me he was reading the ancient Greek historian Herodotus. I asked why. He said, 'Because I've always wanted to and am tired of having my reading assigned.' I thought it was a marvelous declaration of independence.