I do think there's a relationship between a book and a reader that's more intimate, in many ways, than the relationship between an audience member and a play - just by the nature of it being an object that you can have in bed with you and that you can keep and page through.

Being dead is the most airtight defense of one's own aesthetic.

I found that life intruding on writing was, in fact, life. And that, tempting as it may be for a writer who is a parent, one must not think of life as an intrusion. At the end of the day, writing has very little to do with writing, and much to do with life. And life, by definition, is not an intrusion.

No one likes kids. We say we do, and we take pictures of pregnant women for People Magazine, but really they're commodities - we hate them around, we hate them on airplanes, we consider them a grand imposition and almost a style choice.

Attachment parenting is this theory that if you wear your baby around and you sleep with your baby and you breast-feed for a long time, the baby will be more attached to you.

I don't read a word that's written about me. I don't read my own interviews. I don't read reviews. I think it would drive me insane.

Have you ever been so melancholy, that you wanted to fit in the palm of your beloved's hand? And lie there, for fortnights, or decades, or the length of time between stars? In complete silence?