I'm too ambitious to give another man credit, even if that other man is only myself in disguise.

A first-person voice helps to ensure the uniformity and cohesiveness of the narrative; it gathers unto itself incidents and characters in its unstoppable progress toward the story's end.

I don't know about ground rules; but I create the world that arrives with the characters or situation or voice in my head that instigates the piece, whatever form it may take.

My fondness for extended monologue might have been encouraged by two decades of writing stage and radio dramas.

I tell myself that, regardless of what source I draw on, I'm writing a new work for reasons peculiar to me and not an adaptation, and so feel, in the end, justified in singing it my way.

Eventually, I came to believe, stupidly, that I had exhausted that story's "original" form with its single use. I went on to other stories, other forms and genres.

I admitted that I did not understand life. What I meant was that I am bewildered by human hearts and motivations, including my own.

I very much like the idea of the unreliable narrator. Shaping my fictions as monologues - by introducing the "I" - allows me to be as unreliable as I like.

For me, fiction's great gift - to writer and reader, alike - is freedom.

When I was awarded a fellowship in poetry by the National Endowment for the Arts (for "Alphabets"), I felt myself suddenly (vaingloriously) equal to my Crow, which would be - I knew at once - Rat.

I do seem to favor a deathbed confession as the occasion for my dramatic monologues.

As every new breed of virus is conceived, created and released into the wild, another small change is made to the anti-virus software to combat the new threat.

I don't believe in a conspiracy to hide the existence of extraterrestrial life.

The greatest of evils and the worst of crimes is poverty.

My mother was the source from which I derived the guiding principles of my life.

There is more in you than you think.

I started writing it six and a half years ago, so the landscape has changed a lot in that time.

What? You don't think he's cute?" "I didn't really notice." "How can you not notice when a guy is cute?" Melody stared at her in disbelief.

Today there are a lot of novelists who seem to be writing to be reviewed, not read.

What is the difference between Lomborg's view of humanity and Hitler's? ...If you were to accept Lomborg's way of thinking, then maybe what Hitler did was the right thing.

I'm a world expert on superhero comics. I think maybe only Michael Chabon knows more than me.