The greatest lie ever told about love is that it sets you free.

I do my best work under pressure, so I’ll nick an artery, and my husband isn’t allowed to stanch the bleeding till I’ve banged out a chapter.

I was brought up with the sense that I was absolutely no different from my brothers. I went to college thinking I was absolutely no different from the men in college. But that's not true. I'm fundamentally different. The problem was not being able to understand difference and equality at the same time. It's something that we can't seem to comprehend. You can't state difference and also state equality. We have to state sameness to understand equality. It's a mistake.

For me, George Saunders novel [Lincoln in the Bardo] is about a problem of pain.

I know a lot of people who read and think: "George [Saunders] is so much fun." There's no denying you're fun to read, but as a writer I think of [George Saunders] as, in fact, not a fun and freewheeling type but really an obsessive control artist.

Asking why rappers always talk about their stuff is like asking why Milton is forever listing the attributes of heavenly armies. Because boasting is a formal condition of the epic form. And those taught that they deserve nothing rightly enjoy it when they succeed in terms the culture understands.

Then he gave her a kiss on the forehead that felt like a baptism and she wept like a baby.