Every now and then, you find a book that feels like it was keyed to your DNA.

Each source that I read, I would look through the bibliography and the footnotes, and use that as a map for the next thing I would read.

Everyone would tell me they couldn't identify with sexual abuse. No one says they can't identify with the tales of the Greek gods and goddesses because they don't live on Mt. Olympus.

Writers aren't born, they're made - from practice, reading, and a lot of caffeine.

I have lived for a long time inside a series of coincidences that most people would find implausible in a novel.

PhD, MFA, self-taught - the only things you must have to become a writer are the stamina to continue and a wily, cagey heart in the face of extremity, failure, and success.

Whenever people say a coincidence in a novel is implausible, I think, Do I have a story for you.

I had a naiveté that I would remember the things that I had written already, but I was getting lost in the forest of my own ideas and having to find my way out.

The myth works to make the very real things people don't want to look at visible for them.

As I get ready to buy a new computer, I'm stunned at all the many micro drafts, of different chapters and scenes and whatnot, that litter the hard drive.

I grew up treating a life as a writer as a career in letters, one devoted to many kinds of writing. And so it seemed normal to study both fiction writing and the literary essay as an undergrad.

Life and light made up the interior, the realm of daytime. The exterior was darkness and night.

What the collective age wants allows and approves is the perpetual holiday from the self.

Money speaks, but it speaks with a male voice.

The equivalent of external noise is the inner noise of thinking. The equivalent of external silence is inner stillness.

World-wide practice of Conservation and the fair and continued access by all nations to the resources they need are the two indispensable foundations of continuous plenty and of permanent peace

I did toy with the idea of doing a cook-book. . . . I think a lot of people who hate literature but love fried eggs would buy it if the price was right.

Thank you 'adults who wear back packs' for letting me know that I don't have to take you seriously

In the souls of the people the grapes of wrath are filling and growing heavy, growing heavy for the vintage.

If somebody has a bad heart, they can plug this jack in at night as they go to bed and it will monitor their heart during the night, and in the morning, when they wake up dead, there'll be a record.

I'm pretty good at putting up drywall and I'm an excellent kisser. That's pretty much all of my skills right there.