I think first-person narrators should be complex, because otherwise the first-person is too shallow and predictable. I like a first-person narrator who can't totally be trusted.

I have worked really hard to defy categorization, to break down a taxonomy whenever it comes my way.

Impotence, fetishism, bisexuality, and bondage are all facts of life, and our fiction should reflect that.

The past was so past it hurt.

I think literature is best when it's voicing what we would prefer not to talk about.

I am in Boston right now, in fact, to do work at the New England Historical Genealogical Library, where I'm trying to finish up tracing my lineage back to the seventeenth century.

I suppose I should say that I treasure blasphemy, as a faith of the highest order.

Genre is a bookstore problem, not a literary problem.

I judged about a zillion awards this year so Ive been reading a lot of books that just came out.

It's also true, however, that having conquered the regional writer ghetto, I am now intent on conquering the nationalist writer ghetto and moving out into the world more.

I'm trying to read more dead people because I keep having to read stuff for juries and so forth.

Proper lighting is everything, Julianna.

The ocean is never afraid of wind rising against it

The biggest life change any man would ever experience was the ending of it.

Selfishness is not living as one wishes to live, it is asking others to live as one wishes to live.

He was the best shot in India, and I expect that there are few better in London. Have you heard the name?''No, I have not.''Well, well, such is fame!

After a certain number of years our faces become our biographies.

Love is never lost. If not reciprocated, it will flow back and soften and purify the heart.

Words have finished flirting. Now they are making love.

As an actor, throughout three years, I've become more comfortable within my own skin and confident.

People only see gymnastics on TV and in the Olympics at such an extreme. So it can be intimidating.