It's hard to resist the magical thinking that the work habits of great writers are the key to their greatness.

Somewhere between sanity and madness lays a fine line, for some it is a tightrope walked daily, a fight for balance to be won or lost. That fight is lost one of two ways. Some simply lose their balance and fall, others are pushed.

When you live alone, your furnishings, your possessions, are always confronting you with the thinness of your existence.

If everybody was so reverent of the institute of marriage, how did all the adultery get committed?

It's always a disappointing business confronting my own reflection. My body isn't bad. It's a perfectly nice, serviceable body. It's just that the external me- the study, lightly wrinkled, handbagged me- does so little credit to the stuff that's inside.

It's similar to the way you feel cuddling an infant or a kitten, when you want to squeeze it so hard you'd kill it.

I don't write books for people to be friends with the characters. If you want to find friends, go to a cocktail party.