Not every book has to be loaded with symbolism, irony, or musical language, but it seems to me that every book-at least every one worth reading-is about something.

I was being paid to do what I loved, and there's no gig on earth better than that; it's like a license to steal.

I have spent a good many years since―too many, I think―being ashamed about what I write. I think I was forty before I realized that almost every writer of fiction or poetry who has ever published a line has been accused by someone of wasting his or her God-given talent. If you write (or paint or dance or sculpt or sing, I suppose), someone will try to make you feel lousy about it, that's all.

My mother was a reader, and she read to us. She read us Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde when I was six and my brother was eight; I never forgot it.

I like to hang out clothes on windy days. Sometimes that's all I feel like. A sheet on a line.

Cold start is a hard start.

The idea that America exists in a culture of violence is bullshit. What America exists in is a culture of Kardashian.