Maybe when I'm sixty-five I'll talk about my literary life.

I think people on antidepressants often lose sexual feelings. I don't mean that I think sex is only about sadness; it is obviously about joy and vitality and birth as well.

I don't know exactly how long the book as we know it will exist, but I fully expect to make it to my death without having to give up on books.

I believe in the absolute and unlimited liberty of reading. I believe in wandering through the stacks and picking out the first thing that strikes me. I believe in choosing books based on the dust jacket.

Updike worked this way, and I just kinda borrowed it from him. So the memoir will be relief from novel writing for a moment.

I do think that just about whenever I am writing, or more accurately, whenever I have written, I feel better and more at peace as a human being. That doesn't mean, unfortunately, that the literary product is any good.

I'm trying to read more dead people because I keep having to read stuff for juries and so forth.