The belief that consciousness extends beyond death is surely to put more belief in the permanence of self, not less. That seems to me a comfort that you're allowing yourself.

I lost many literary battles the day I read 'Their Eyes Were Watching God.' I had to concede that occasionally aphorisms have their power. I had to give up the idea that Keats had a monopoly on the lyrical.

I'm a writer who never writes about sex. It's so far from my own fictional world.

The ideal reader cannot sleep when holding the writer he was meant to be with.

…maybe the whole Internet will simply become like Facebook: falsely jolly, fake-friendly, self-promoting, slickly disingenuous….” - Zadie Smith

Oh, I know that. You know me, baby, I cannot be broken. Takes a giant to snap me in half.

[George Saunders] is very precise about what he is doing. There isn't a thing left to chance.