There is a deep sadness to American poverty, greater than the sadness of any other kind. It's because America has such an ideology of success.

Many of my works fall into the category of "Zeitgeist novels." Yet I hope that they aren't only reportage, but also attempts to convey the sense of the present to the future.

Regard yourself as a small corporation of one. Take yourself off on team-building exercises (long walks). Hold a Christmas party every year at which you stand in the corner of your writing room, shouting very loudly to yourself while drinking a bottle of white wine. Then masturbate under the desk. The following day you will feel a deep and cohering sense of embarrassment.

My novels tend to come about from a fusion of two big ideas, creating a critical mass that then fissions, throwing off hundreds of other particles, riffs, tropes and characters.

As a writer, I'm not convinced that we are the best equipped to understand how we go about the business of literary production.

A creative life cannot be sustained by approval, any more than it can be destroyed by criticism.

The novelist, quite rightly, fears the psychoanalyst as both an enemy and a usurper.