I often worry that my idea of personhood is nostalgic, irrational, inaccurate.

It's a feeling of happiness that knocks me clean out of adjectives. I think sometimes that the best reason for writing novels is to experience those four and a half hours after you write the final word.

Each couple is its own vaudeville act.

When I was 13, I really used to skip down the street, happy in thinking, "Oh, well, someone's suffering pain in order for me to feel this pleasure."

Everything shrinks. Individual character. Friendships. Language. Sensibility.

I never attended a creative writing class in my life. I have a horror of them.

All tastes are expressions of belief.