I spend most of my time in my head. You can always work out solutions and satisfactions there. Maybe you can't actually bring them about, but there's usually a pleasant pillow of time between imagining you can, and realizing you cannot.

Literature and art are one of a number of relationships I have with the world. Like you have relationships with your friends and a relationship with your lover and your relationship with your family and your relationship with your work - sometimes it's really great; sometimes it's non-existent, sometimes it's fruitful.

I feel like one can have all of that as a writer; you're writing, you're reading, you're talking to interesting and intelligent people. Your life is structured around whatever book you're writing, and so is your reading and so are many of your conversations.

There are certain people who do not feel like they were raised by wolves, and they are the ones who make the world tick. They are the ones who keep everything functioning so the rest of us can worry about what sort of person we should be.

There was not an awareness of pop culture in the household. There was a lot of respect for working hard, and for intellectual and professional achievement.

It's nice to go into your doom. It's so liberating.

I'm in a serious monogamous relationship, and I don't want to keep having different boyfriends, and I have this instead - with men and women. It's better. Instead of having sex, we have art.