Some literature is knowledge, some is just data. But if I can get a "happy" ending - which is when for the characters I'm writing about, something happens that they move from wherever they are in the beginning to knowledge or wisdom, they know something they never would have acknowledged or realized if it hadn't been for my book - that for me is what literature does.

Let your face speak what's in your heart. When my kids walk in the room my face says I'm glad to see them.

Your life is already artful-waiting, just waiting, for you to make it art.

The difference between that which is humane and that which is patriotic is a vital difference.

The vitality of language lies in its ability to limn the actual, imagined and possible lives of its speakers, readers, writers.

Think of anybody - Dostoevsky or Jane Austen - [their work] was always something that now we would call political. So I don't see those separations too much, between what is artistic and what is political. Maybe in painting... no, I don't even believe that.

In times of dread, artists must never choose to remain silent.