(Feedback) People become addicted to it. That’s why journalism is so popular, because you want to hear, every day, what people think of what you just wrote. I think a little patience on that front can be good, too.

For ridding oneself of faith is like boiling seawater to retrieve the salt--something is gained but something is lost.

In a whisper he began begging for—and, as the sun set, received—the concession people always beg for: a little more time.

The idea that motherhood is inherently somehow a threat to creativity is just absurd.

I read Carver. Julio Cortázar. Amis's essays. Baldwin. Lorrie Moore. Capote. Saramago. Larkin. Wodehouse. Anything, anything at all, that doesn't sound like me.

When people use that stream of consciousness, it's kind of just a term they use for anything that looks slightly different on the page.

If you're going to write a good book, you have to make mistakes and you have to not be so cautious all the time.