You discarded most of the lies along the way but held on to the one that said life mattered.

Her body was wrapped in shadows like moth wings, like rose-petals.

We like to think about how smart we are. But I think talent as a writer is hard-wired in, it's all there, at least the basic elements of it. You can't change it any more than you can choose whether to be right handed or left handed.

He would write it for the reason he felt that all great literature, fiction and nonfiction, was written: truth comes out, in the end it always comes out. He would write it because he felt he had to.

I've never seen novels as built things. I have a tendency to see them as found things so that I always feel a little bit like an archaeologist who's working to get some fragile fossil out of the ground. And the more you get out unbroken, the better you succeed.

The best show on television is Red Sox baseball. Everything else sucks.

It's alright to feel fear, but sometimes a very bad idea to show it.