I really wanted to be a musician, but it turned out I had no sense of time.

Nothing beats novel writing because it's complete expression of you. You just control everything. Not even a movie director has that level of control.

I write about kids growing up, I write a lot about schools and parents, and all of my experiences with those things have been suburban experiences.

Once you'd broken through that invisible barrier that separates one person from another, you were connected forever, whether you liked it or not.

I used to describe myself as a comic novelist, but my concerns seem to have darkened over the past few years.

My mythic version of America is very much about parents and children, and in my experience, the suburban setting is where that particular drama plays out. Which isn't to say that there aren't parents and children in cities or on farms. I just don't know them.

Apparently even the most awful tragedies, and the people they'd ruined, got a little stale after a while.