I suppose at one time in my life I might have had any number of stories, but now there is no other. This is the only story I will ever be able to tell.

When you feel homesick,’ he said, ‘just look up. Because the moon is the same wherever you go.

Beauty is terror. Whatever we call beautiful, we quiver before it.

The books I loved in childhood - the first loves - I’ve read so often that I’ve internalized them in some really essential way: they are more inside me now than out.

The Little Friend is a long book. It's also completely different from my first novel: different landscape, different characters, different use of language and diction, different approach to story.

Sometimes you can do all the right things and not succeed. And that's a hard lesson of reality.

Taking on challenging projects is the way that one grows and extends one's range as a writer, one's technical command, so I consider the time well-spent

It is is better to know one book intimately than a hundred superficially.

I believe, in a funny way, the job of the novelist is to be out there on the fringes and speaking for an experience that has not really been spoken for.

Does such a thing as "the fatal flaw," that showy dark crack running down the middle of a life, exist outside literature?

Criticism at the wrong time, even if it's legitimate criticism, can be seriously damaging and make the writer lose faith in what he's doing. It's the timing that's all-important.

Leaders fly economy. They prefer people around them than luxury.

Rather than you smoking a cigarette, the cigarette is really smoking you.

We must remember that knowledge of one’s own deep nature is also simultaneously knowledge of human nature in general.

When times are difficult, I tell myself, 'I'm just passing through.'

Where's the great pay? Where's the travel? Where's the Winnebago, Goddamnit!

There's someone out there who needs you. You must live your life so that person can find you.

The stories from 1975 on are not finished and there is no resolve. I could spend 50 hours on the last 25 years of jazz and still not do it justice.

If you need to invoke your academic pedigree or job title for people to believe what you say, then you need a better argument.

My wound is geography. It is also my anchorage, my port of call.

I don't mind talking about acting. I don't have anything interesting to say about it, but it's interesting talking about it.