I had a period where I thought I might not be good enough to publish.

You learned to accept, or you ended up in a small room writing letters home with Crayolas.

I'm a situational writer. You give me a situation, like a writer gets in a car crash, breaks his leg, is kidnapped by his number-one fan, and is kept in a cabin and forced to write a book - everything else springs from there. You really don't have to work once you've had the idea. All you have to do is kind of take dictation from something inside.

I’ve always said to people, "I don’t care what you call me as long as the checks don’t bounce and the family gets fed." But I never saw myself that way. I just saw myself as a novelist.

I am, when you stop to think of it, a member of a fairly select group: the final handful of American novelists who learned to read and write before they learned to eat a daily helping of video bullshit.

There will be water if God wills it.

The late afternoon sunlight, warm as oil, sweet as childhood.